Mel Robbins ON: Why You Can’t Stop Procrastinating & How to Eliminate Self-Doubt in 5 Seconds - podcast episode cover

Mel Robbins ON: Why You Can’t Stop Procrastinating & How to Eliminate Self-Doubt in 5 Seconds

Oct 04, 20211 hr 23 min
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Episode description

You can order my new book 8 RULES OF LOVE at 8rulesoflove.com or at a retail store near you. You can also get the chance to see me live on my first ever world tour. This is a 90 minute interactive show where I will take you on a journey of finding, keeping and even letting go of love. Head to jayshettytour.com and find out if I'll be in a city near you. Thank you so much for all your support - I hope to see you soon.

Mel Robbins chats with Jay Shetty about the High 5 habit and how it can help you come to terms with your real self. How you start your day sets the tone for the rest of your day and immensely affects your confidence and productivity. And seeing that person looking at you in the mirror, your other self, helps you wipe away the dust that’s blocking you from loving your true self.

Mel began her career as a criminal defense attorney in NYC for Legal Aid in 1994, spent 5 years at CNN as a legal analyst, 5 number one audiobooks released on Audible, and 1 Gracie Award: America’s Outstanding News Talk Show Host. Her book, The High 5 Habit, explains the one proven habit that gives you the confidence to transform your life.

Go to http://samatea.com/onpurpose to get on the list for early access + receive a free 5-Minute Wellness Journal made to help guide you through your wellness journey and daily routine

What We Discuss with Mel:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:38 Think Like A Monk: Is it dust or is it me?
  • 04:46 The High 5 Habit
  • 08:38 How Covid brought many lives on a standstill
  • 13:26 The excitement of seeing yourself for the first time
  • 15:46 How to get into the High 5 habit
  • 22:50 Gestures that are symbols of trust and partnership
  • 26:49 Your mood in the morning impacts your confidence and productivity
  • 29:31 The bouncer in your brain
  • 34:00 How to be kind to yourself
  • 40:43 The research on the snooze button
  • 47:16 Outsourcing love and validation to outside things
  • 53:28 It’s only when you love yourself that you can let others love you
  • 57:14 It’s not your partner’s job to make you happy
  • 01:00:34 Leave room for each other to grow
  • 01:04:22 Jealousy is not hatred, it’s desire
  • 01:09:56 Your brain is designed to protect you and change requires risks
  • 01:13:40 Mel on Fast Five

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Episode Resources:

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Transcript

Speaker 1

You don't even know the number of amazing things you do every day. Instead, you focus and ruminate on the one thing you didn't get to and then you use that as evidence again dust on the mirror to see a human being that's not measuring up and never will and all that stuff. They're stupid. Fourth grade teacher said, you must be true dust on the mirror. No, you need to interrupt this here we Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.

Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. And I am so excited to be talking to you today. I can't believe it. My new book, Eight Rules of Love is out and I cannot wait to share it with you. I am so so excited for you to read this book, for you to listen to this book. I read the audiobook. If you haven't got it already, make sure you go to eight Rules of Love dot com. It's dedicated to any one who's trying to find, keep,

or let go of love. So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book. And I'd love to invite you to come and see me for my global tour Love Rules. Go to Jay shedytour dot com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences and more. I can't wait to see you this year. Now. Today's guest is a longtime friend, someone that I deeply admire. I can't wait to have this conversation with her. Her books, her

audiobooks have been revolutionary, They've been absolutely phenomenal. And finally, this is I can't believe this is the first time we actually have a On Purpose. I'm speaking about the one and only Mel Robins. For those of you that don't know, she's one of the leading voices in personal

development and transformation and an international best selling author. Her work includes The Global Phenomenon, The Five Second Rule, and the upcoming book that we're talking about today, The High Five Habit, and you can join the High Five Habit Challenge through the link in our description. Plus, she has four number one best selling audiobooks, the number one podcast on Audible, as well as signature online courses that have changed the lives of more than half a million students worldwide.

Please welcome to On Purpose, Mel Robin's mouth. I love you, I gotta like Oh, yes, there we go, let's do both. I don't know if I do that. I think I just called the muscle on my Rarebut okay, I can't believe this is your first time here. Well, first of all, thank you because you've invited me, and um, I just knew I wanted to wait until I had something truly extraordinary to talk to you about that I do. That just shows how modest you are, because you always have

something extraordinary to talk about that. I too, am happy today we're talking about this incredible new book, The High Five Habit, Take control of your life with one simple habit, the book that I want everyone who's listening right now to go out and order. I know we haven't even started the conversation yet, but I'm so confident in what I've read from the book, my conversation with Mel, not

just online but offline. And Mel, I know you have an interesting story about how this relates to me somehow, which you mentioned to me. I do, and I've been holding back since you walked in the room. I was like, save it for the podcast, save it for the podcast. Can you reveal my connection with the High five Habit?

I sure can. Okay, So when I was coming on it dawned on me what an incredibly deep and profound connection that you and I share around what we're about to talk about now, Like everybody on the planet, I devoured your book. I literally dog eared it. I highlighted it. And on page seven there is a story that you tell that is a beautiful metaphor that illustrates the external influences that obscure our true selves. You know what story I'm talking about? I do I believe it's that? Is

it dust or is it me? Yes? Is that about the mirror? And yes, yes, And so the story is all about this metaphor of up in this attic of the Ashram, there's a mirror with a thick layer of dust. And when you look at a mirror that's accumulated a thick layer of dust, you can't truly see yourself, your soul, your spirit, and the dust comes from your life, it's not you. I'm going to get like super emotional already because the high five habit is how you wipe the

dust away. I know. And when I was reading that, For anyone who's not watching right now, mel is on the verge of tears. But if you're listening when I opened up the high five habit, and you tell that story for you. Yeah, of you're looking in the mirror as we all do in the morning when we wake

up to brush our teeth, and you're criticizing yourself. You're poking holes in your appearance, in how you wish you worked out more, how you've got such a long to do list today, how you have no energy, how you'd rather curl up and watch TV and do nothing for the rest of the day. And that is an experience that we all have had more than we even think like we've had that daily. A lot of us have had that for months and even years. And so it's

amazing how that story also starts looking in the mirror. Yes, tell us about what has changed about how you look in the mirror today with the high five habit. So I have been practicing this habit for a little over a year, and it all began in April of twenty twenty. And this is not something that I was like, Okay, I got to write a book. It's got to have a five in it. It's going to be five years since I've written a book. Thank you, dyslexia and ADHD. What am I going to write about what am I?

That's not how this happened. The high five saved me. It was a ladder that helped me climb out of a hole I had fallen into emotionally, physically, spiritually. And a year later, after practicing what is going to sound like a weird, stupid thing which you will resist and Jay, you and I are going to unpack this because it's sad. Why everybody resists it. It has to do with the dust that's accumulated. And I will tell you, after a year of practicing this, I don't even see a face

or a body. I see a soul. I don't even have to high five myself. I still do because it feels good. And we're going to explain the science that is bananas about why this actually works for everybody who tries it. Because this is not something that's new. You are tapping into programming that's already in your mind and body and now directing it back at yourself. It's incredible. I don't ever criticize myself. I don't ever see what's wrong.

I see a human being who's trying, who deserves love and respect, and I know that it's my job to give it to her. You know, the five second rule, which I created, I don't know over a decade ago, that's gone on to help me change my whole life. It's a little starting ritual and a brain hack that you can use to help yourself take the actions and change the thoughts that change your life. It helped me be more productive, It helped me get stuff done. The

high five habit has changed who I am. It has deleted a lifetime of criticism and negativity from my mind, and it has reprogrammed the soundtrack to be somebody that's supportive and a cheerleader. It's extraordinary. That's so beautiful to hear because I think so often we like to oscillate

from one extreme to another. So people start by criticizing themselves and then sometimes we've heard in the toxic positivity movement of we'll just tell yourself you're amazing and tell yourself you're incredible, And to me, that doesn't always work either, because it doesn't struggle to say it with feeling and meaning and belief. But what I love about what you're sharing with the high five habit is that it's actually looking at no You're trying let me be supportive, Let

me be encouraging. Let me use my words to notice that which I want to grow and work on. But I'm not creating an artificial illusion of either criticism or perfection, both of which are unreal. Well, and here's the extraordinary thing. You don't have to say a word. You don't have

to say a word. Like. One of the reasons why mantras don't work for so many people is you choose something you don't believe, and so as you stand before a mirror or you say it to yourself after a lifetime of beating yourself up, your brain's like, Yep, no, we don't believe that. Because you've told me the other opposite story for so long, I'm not going to buy

it now. You know, I gotta tell you, like how this all went down, because it's in the kind of unfolding of the story that there's layer after layer after layer. So you know, the backdrop of this is that it was you know, I think we all have that moment when we knew that COVID was going to change your life forever. When was that moment for you? I was

one of the optimistic ones when it first happened. I was like, ah, the world's going to deal with this in like a month or maybe three months, And so I think it was about three months in where I was like, Okay, I have no idea how this is going, and this is not what I expected. So I'd say about three months in, I'd say probably about that June time,

June twenty twenty got it. Yeah, Well, for me, it happened on a Wednesday in March of twenty twenty, yeah, early, because I was taping my daytime talk show at CBS Broadcast Center and they walked in and said they had found it in the building, and within five minutes we had to evacuate. Show canceled. I'm fired from my dream job. I'm driving home to Boston, Massachusetts, which is where my husband and I have raised our kids. I see New

York City disappearing in the skyline phone rings. It's our daughter who's studying abroad for college, and they're shutting down the borders. Then the other daughter, they're closing down the university here in California. We all get home and speech after speech after speech gets canceled. And then a publisher i'd been working with on a totally different book concept cancels that contract, and now I've got to give money

back that I've already spent. There's no PPP loans yet I have no idea how I'm going to make payroll. My kids are in a complete state of crisis and break down because their lives are now just imploding before their eyes. I'm worried about the world. I'm worried about frontline workers, and I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. And I wake up one morning in April and it's a very familiar feeling. This is not

a book about the pandemic. This is a book about how you pick yourself up when you feel like you just don't know how to face your life. So I woke up that morning and I felt defeated. I felt overwhelmed. I felt exhausted. I used the five second rule five four three two one to get out of bed. I make the bed so I don't crawl back into it, and I go to the bathroom and I'm standing there

in the bathroom and I'm brushing my teeth. And as I'm brushing my teeth, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I think, oh my god, you look like hell. And then my mind started to criticize the woman in the mirror, the dark circles under her eyes, the saggy neck, one breast is hanging lower than the other. Just the beatdown begins. And then, of course, once you go there you teach this, your mind is just going

to keep on taking you down. And so it became why did you get up so late and you got a zoom call in eight minutes and you haven't even walked the dog? And you know what's interesting about this moment, Jay, if you had walked in the bathroom in that moment, I would have been able to turn on a dime. I would have said, Jay, I know it's a lot. You don't deserve this, but if anybody can handle this, you can. I know you can't. I would have lifted you up like just it would have been if for effortless.

But standing there alone in my underwear in my own bathroom, I couldn't think of anything to say. And in fact, here's the thing. I don't think I would have believed it because of what you just said. It didn't match how I was feeling. Now. I don't know what came over me because it sounds ridiculous. I've never done this before, but I suddenly found myself raising my hand and high fiving that woman I saw in the mirror because she

needed it. And here's the thing. It's not like lightning struck, right, you know, it's not like the heavens parted, nangels are like life. That's not what happened. The dogs still needed to be walked. I still had endless things. I was still worried, but something in me shifted. It was weird, and it was kind of this thing because I thought a lot about this moment. It's like my shoulders dropped and my chin lifted, and I didn't even like say

anything positive. It's like there was this energy flip, and the energy felt a little bit more, not very ja shetty, more kind of mel robbins. Oh, come on, get out there, stop complaining, get yourself, come on, you can do this. Like it was sort of that sort of all right, here we go. But it was the second morning. The second morning is when everything changed. I wake up, same problems, same overwhelm, exhausted, defeated, tired, five four three two one.

I get out of bed, I make the bed. I start walking to the bathroom, and JA, I noticed that I was feeling something I had never felt in my entire life, and it was this. You know, when you're about to meet a friend, somebody really like at a Cafe'm going to go have a cup of tea. What do you feel right before you walk in the door. Excitement, enthusiasm, energy, joy, positive nervousness like that that kind of like butterflies, even in the in a positive sense. Yeah. So at this moment,

I was fifty one years old. In fifty one years of being alive, I don't ever remember feeling that feeling about seeing myself. Wow, for the first time in my life, I had this sensation that I was excited to see the human being. Mel Robbins. Now I've been excited to see an outfit or excited to see a haircut, I have never been excited to see the person. And so I round the corner and this sense of how profound this is is hitting me and I'm standing there brushing

my teeth and I realize something really wild. There are always two of you in the bathroom together. There's you, and there is a human being in the mirror, a person who needs you, a person who has been waiting for you to wake up and realize they are there and they need you to see them and to hear them, and to love them and to support them. And so what's interesting, because you brought up morning routines, right, is that we all talk about the importance of setting our

day up because it's how it ends up. We talk about gratitude and meditation, and we know the extraordinary benefits of it. But I don't think anybody has truly amplified the fact that there is this dirty habit that we all have every single morning that is a part of your morning routine unless you have weeded this out, and it is a habit of either ignoring yourself or beating the heck out of yourself every single morning. In the mirror. I mean, nine percent of women don't like how they look.

Fifty percent of us can't even look at ourselves in the mirror. That's what I was about to say, that eye contact. I think there's such a struggle what you just rightly said. It's not just that we beat ourselves up, will criticize we can't even look at ourselves. How does how does the high five habit help us get that? Oh, it's incredible. Yeah, it's absolutely. Let's let's talk about the habits and then we can break it down. Yeah. Yeah, that's because I know part of it is practicing in

the bathroom. Yes, yes, let's break it down. Okay. So here's where you're gonna feel when you do it. It's very simple. You're gonna look at yourself in the mirror and you're going to leverage some research out of Harvard Move talk about that too, Yeah, dive into that. So you're basically just going to look at yourself in the mirror and you're gonna ask yourself, what is that human being need for me today? How can I show up for him or her day? How do I do that today? Kindness?

Do I need to be more courageous or bold? You kind of set this intention for yourself and then you're simply going to raise your hand and you're gonna high five yourself. Now, a couple of things I want you to expect. Number One, it will feel weird. Period. It feels weird for everybody because it is the opposite of what you're doing right now, and so your brain is going to reject it as odd. Number Two, you're either going to have one of two reactions. That's it. There's

no middle ground. You will either have a very profound positive experience where you're going to laugh, probably because it kind of feels good and it's kind of silly, or you're going to burst into tears in a positive way because it's a release that you have finally woken up and started supporting yourself. You just got it, and that's where the tears come from. But more likely, although maybe not for you because you're a fan of this podcast,

but more likely you will feel resistance. And the resistance is the dust on the mirror. Every single morning, Jay, we bring with us our entire past. Whatever has been done to you, whether it's trauma or discrimination, or abuse or neglect or abandonment, it is standing between you and the mirror. It's the dust. And you see that dust and you say that means that I am not worthy, I am not lovable. So you see a human being that's distorted, and you say to yourself, because of what's happened,

I don't deserve a high five. Or if you're a human being, you've done a ton of stuff that you regret, and so all the things that wish you could change, that you would forgive j or you'd forgive Mel Robbins for it. You cannot forgive yourself. It's more dust. And so you stand there and you say, because of all that stuff that I did, I'm unworthy or I'm unlovable, or I'm this or I'm that, and that dust keeps you from seeing a human being who deserves support and celebrate.

Or another form of the dust, which is the resistance, is that you actually believe that you do not deserve to be celebrated or supported unless you have the bank account or the number on the scale, or you drive in the car or live in the neighborhood, or your hair is less kinky, or you're this or you're that, and so you withhold the very support and celebration that you need in order to change your life from you because you haven't done it yet. That's where the resistance

comes from. And so I'm here to say you got to try this for five days because it's going to feel weird. You're going to resist it. And what's going to happen is you'll notice as you raise your hand, and this is where the science gets amazing. As you raise your hand J you will go from thinking this is weird or thinking this is stupid to silence, and this is explained by science. There is a field of study called n Aerobicsnuerobics is a word that I did

not invent. It is aerobic or physical movement with new neural pathway development. And research has shown that when you use an aerobics it is the fastest way to form new neural pathways. So the way that you do it is you take an unexpected physical movement like high fiving yourself, something you've never done, and you marry it with a thought. Now here's where things get crazy cool. You've been high fiving people your whole life. You've been receiving high fives

your whole life. So Jay, when you high five somebody, what are you communicating through the gesture? A feeling of connectedness, a feeling of support, a feeling of I'm congratulating you or celebrating you, a feeling of you've got this like that kind of feeling. Yeah, completely, all of it is programmed in your subconscious brain. When you go to raise your hand to high five somebody. I can never high five J and go You're a jerk. Jay. I don't like you, Jay, I hope your Tea, which I'm a

founding club member of. It really fails. You can't do it, yeah, because the programming is already in your brain. Yes, you cannot look at yourself in the mirror and think terrible things while you're high fiving yourself because your brain won't

allow it. It is programmed to think something different. And as you repeat this every day, just five days, Dear God, give me five days of doing this, you will override the critic and you will reprogram your mind to associate belief, love, encouragement, support, resilience with your own reflection. This is why I don't even see myself in terms of a body anymore. I see a human being that I love, that I support, just like I would a friend or a child that

I love unconditionally. It's mind blowing. But that's not all. So I talked to our peal doctor, Daniel Aman, and this isn't even in the book. This is just something I learned two weeks ago. He went bananas when I talked about this thing. So, Jay, when you high five somebody else, your brain drifts dopamine. The reason why when you do this, even on a low morning, you get a boost in your mood and a little bit of clarity. Wow, is you get a dripodopamine by high fiving yourself again?

Because the programming is already in your brain, you're just now turning it from everybody else and giving it to yourself. And there's a second thing that's super cool. So doctor Aman was explaining. He said, you know, and you know, mel, when you leave the bathroom you feel kind of peppy, right, And I'm like, yeah, it's kind of weird. He said, Well, let me tell you what that is. He said, your

nervous system is encoded with celebratory energy. When you wave hello, you're raising your arms when you cross a finish line. You raise your arms when you hug somebody, raise your arms when you high five somebody. You raise your arms. When you do this every morning, especially when you're going through a challenging moment, your nervous system recognizes the celebratory gesture and gives you a jolt of energy. Is that not incredible? It's incredible and it makes so much sense. Yes,

and I love you know. You have this incredible ability to make personal development feel like a light switch. You would never think it's that simple, but we all every day flip on a light switch, we expect the light to come on, we flip it off and it goes off. And with the high five habit and the five second rule, I feel they're both light switches. They're this really tiny action, really tiny action, but there's really big result that just

instantly happens. Right, what you're just saying now, what you just said about everything doctor Layman told you, those are massive responses to a really simple action. I mean just raising your hand to just high fiving. And so I feel like you do that beautifully. You really have this art in simplifying things into seconds worth of advice. And what I love about that is that's why our brain

has less excuses. Because if it's like, if you're like Jay, I really need you to take out like twenty minutes of your day do this new thing, everyone goes, what am I going to find twenty minutes? You literally took about again five seconds, Yes. How long does it take to high five yourself? Even less? Probably? Yeah? And you don't have to say anything, you don't have to feel anything, You just have to do it. And what's already programmed in your body, it does You're right, It's such a

beautiful light switch. It flips it on for you, and I want you to do it right after you brush your teeth, because you got to get that crap out of your mouth so you don't spread the dragon breath on everybody. Let's get the crap and the dust off the mirror. Yeah, so you're not spreading that negativity throughout your day, and you're walking into your day feeling like you have your own back and feeling that life force that you were born with and being reminded that, yeah,

life may be hard. Yeah I may have screwed things up, but I know I'm still here trying, and I deserve to feel supported, and so I'm going to tap into this to send myself out into the game. Yes, you know one of the really cool studies. I'm sure you love the study about the NBA team So I know you've talked about this yourself. This is both common sense and science. How does your favorite sports team begin the game by high fiving each other to send yourself out

into the game. But when researchers actually studied NBA teams, they could predict who's going to be the most successful teams at the end of the season and who's going to be at the bottom of the league based on one characteristic at the beginning of the season in the preseason, and that is how many times does the team in the preseason do fist pumps, high fives, or pats on the back. And what they found is it's the teams that do that the most in the beginning have the

winningest record. And the reason the question is why, Well, the reason why is these gestures or more than gestures, they are symbols of trust and partnership. They build momentum. And so many of us are struggling in life with people pleasing and guilt and all of these emotions because we have broken that partnership with ourselves. And this is a way every morning, after brushing your teeth, were going

to stack this habit. Put the toothbrush down, pick up your hand, look yourself in the mirror, and say, how am I going to show up for that human being today and seal it with a high five. That's it. That's it, that's it. And what I love about this book for those of you are listening, you'll have to get the book to see this is you have these beautiful pictures from your community and beyond of people actually practicing it, and do you prefer that one or that one?

That one? Yeah, let me know. If it's good, you can zoom in. So I just want to show a few pages home, tell me, yeah, you've got it amazing. I want to show you a few pages just because I think it's beautiful to see so many people practicing this. There's a few more that I want to show side Yeah, I think, oh yeah, the ones at the back, but there's also these. The one of you is really special to me. That one. I have to show that one. I really liked that one because to me, that was

too Yeah, that one, to me, was was brilliant. This is when Mel discovered. Had I known it was going to be in a photo weiner in my bed head? Yeah, that's the best. But it's beautiful because I love how practical it is. I love how everyone can give it a go. I really believe everyone who's listening right now we can all take five days to give this a go, even if you think it's silly, which I don't think you will, because you love this podcast and you love

Mel and you love everything that we're talking about. But it's like, this is the least investment we could make in ourselves like it requires zero investment, it require it's free. It's free, it requires zero time commitment. You're already standing in front of the mirror brushing your teeth. Yeah, it's just an extra five seconds. On top of that, it's absolutely nothing more. Tell me about what this does for

the rest of the day. What is the knock on effect of doing something like this in the morning, Because what my head's going to right now is, in this moment, you are choosing to high five instead of beat yourself. That's to me what you're teaching people to do. Yes, you're training people to choose, make a choice that is going to transfer into every choice they have to make

throughout the day. So now when the bus says to them, Hey, you haven't done this, you haven't done that, you haven't done this, how's it going to invite to talk to me about that? And what you This is absolutely awesome, so kind of from a just sort of the way that people talk about it. This is both what I've experienced and what our audience is constantly writing to us about. And by the way, this is without even having a

book out yet. I know this is simply from having people and convincing people around the world to try it. Everybody says it's weird, but I got to hand it to you, mel This pivots my day and sends it in an entirely different trajectory. You know, you talk about it all the time. Your mood in the morning impacts

your confidence and your productivity all day. We know that research from Harvard tells us that when you get intentional about how you're going to show up and not only boost your productivity and your confidence and your focus, it also changes your ability to make an impact with people. We also know all the research around what's called emotional contagion when they did I didn't even write about this

in the book. But when you separate leaders into two groups, and you show one group a leader very stressful videos for twenty minutes that make you feel agitated or bombed out, and you throw another group all these videos with puppies and kittens and Jay Chetty content, that's amazing the leaders that go in to their teams within ten minutes, the teams feel exactly either the negative agitation or the positive agitation. But it goes even deeper. So the High five habit

in the mirror j it's just the trojan horse. There are dozens of tools in this and we go deep into something you talk about all the time, the reticular activity system, which is the filter in your brain that in real time. I think about it. This is not an elegant way to describe it. I think about it like an electronic hairnet that sits on your brain, and in real time, this sucker is changing. We've all experienced its effect when we've shopped for a house or a car.

The second you start shopping for your first car, what happens You start seeing those cars that you're looking for everywhere everywhere. That is what that's your ras. You have a bouncer in your brain that has a massive job, and the job of your bouncer in your brain is to decide what gets into the prefrontal cortex, what passes through. There's only four things, Jay, that actually get through automatically. Your name. We've all experienced it. Oh did they say

Jay number two having to me this morning? Really, I had a random person, I think, shout my name us. I was looking around. Well, that's the bouncer in your brain and let it in. And there are bazilion other sounds. By the way that you didn't hear because the bouncer in your brain blocked them out. The second thing is any immediate threat. So like if you hear a loud noise, you'll kind of like duck. But there are a loud noises all day that don't make you do that because

the bouncer in your brain is blocking it out. The third one, and this can be tricky for relationships. I know you're writing a book about this, So this is any sign that you think your partner might be interested in sex with you or somebody else. You know, This is that jealousy they hate. And then the fourth one, and this is where the treasure is. This is everything your brain filters the world based on what you tell

it is important to you. So when you're shopping for a new car, you suddenly say to your ras, this is important to me, and it lets an imagery of the car. This works in positive and negative ways. Trauma is an example of how your filter gets trained by a very negative event. It becomes very important because your nervous system responded to it, so your brain records as much as it can to try to protect you. A positive way is by saying something that you talk about

the writing out of your goals. They having visual and environmental triggers that keep these things front of These are ways to train your brain for a positive effect. So one of the things that happens when you start to high five yourself, and why it goes so much deeper even than the boost and the partnership, is that what happens is you're now tapping into an entire field of research called behavioral activation therapy. You talk about it a lot, you know all the science. If you don't know it,

there's a very simple way to talk about it. It's called act like the person you want to become. And the reason why this is so important is we know thinking alone won't get you to change. You actually have to take the actions that change everything. And one of the reasons why high fiving yourself is such a powerful action is the bouncer in your brain, the ris it's paying attention. When it suddenly sees you stop the beatdown

and it sees you act differently. It sees you acting like somebody who actually cares about you, who celebrates you, and who sees the high five, it will switch in real time and start to see the world in a way that reflects back the fact that you deserve love and support. So the more that you act like somebody who loves and supports and believes in themselves by high fiving themselves, the more your brain changes and the more your reality changes. Now to your point with toxic positivity,

does it change the very real issues people face? Of course not. It does not change the fact that there's discrimination and poverty and trauma and very real obstacles that you may be facing right now. What it changes is you and your ability to face those things, and your resilience and your belief that through your attitude and your actions, you can make a positive difference in those things. Yeah. Yeah. What I love about what you just said is that

we're all going to face pain and discomfort regardless. The only choice we have is are you going to face pain and discomfort with the feeling of supporting yourself or are you going to face pain and discomfort with the feeling of condemning yourself? Right, that's the only choice you have.

We're all going to face it. We're all going to have to deal with stuff that we don't want to deal with, and the only choice we get to make is what attitude do I want to affect this from what thoughts do I want to have as I go through this? And I think all of us would agree that we'd rather be going through with thoughts that's say, you've got this, you can do this, we can get there, will figure it out, we'll find an answer, will make it through, rather than the voice in your head that's

saying I don't think you should do this. No, this's not going to work. No, stop, No, you're terrible. Oh this is the worst thing you could which is what we're all airing. Let's talk about what are the key aspects You talk about this so much in the book, and I do believe this is at the heart of the High five habit and also just the heart of what you're sharing in this book. What are the key principles of how someone deals with themselves when they love themselves,

when they care for themselves. What are those key tenets, those those key values that we can draw ourselves to a measure against it, saying am I doing that for myself? Does that make sense? Say? Yeah, am I creating that for myself? Because I feel like we know, like we always say, and some of this is similar, but we always say, oh if your child and you know you

have children going off to make friends at school. We always say be kind asked you know, you share advice, but we've never been told how to have a relationship with ourselves. What are the key principles to having a positive relationship video? So it's a fabulous question. So I think at the heart of it are two foundational habits that you need and one you already mentioned. It's being

kind to yourself. It's really that simple. And I know you know the study that they did in the UK where they looked at every possible behavior change that you could do in life, and whether it was changing and diet, meditation, exercise, relationship changes, all of it. The one change that has the biggest impact on fulfillment and happiness is being kind to yourself. And it's the one change we practice the least because I don't think we know how Yeah I don't.

How do yeah? How do we be kind us? Well? Number one, stop the beat down in the mirror and despite the fact that it might feel weird or you're going to resist it, or you got a lot of dust, oh boy, we gotta wipe it away. Oh it's for like mud like us. Jay has to us. The rest of us are caked with mud. It gets a probable grief in there. The high five habit every day is

wiping that away. Okay, that's number one. Number two, when you catch yourself in the what if loop or the beat down, use the five second roll count backwards five four three two one, interrupt it and start just interrupting it because you don't have to listen to it. You can't always control when it pops up, but you can

start to create distance from it. Meditation obviously helps with that, But in terms of the hand to fist combat with your own brain, I prefer punchback five four three two one, and then I literally go, I'm not thinking about that. Another strategy that you can use as you're doing the hand to hand combat with your own brain is come up with like an avatar for this negative voice, okay, and make it really good. Like when our son was

really profoundly struggling with anxiety. He's sixteen now, he started to call that worry wart in his head that was beating him up, Oliver, and he looked like this big, pimply bully of a kid that was out of the diary, the whimpy kid and he would literally say when he was nine years old, shut up our oliver like, you're not invited to sleeve like. He would literally talk to it. And it sounds like you're giving your kid multiple personalities.

That's not actually what's happening. You're leveraging objectivity, so you separate yourself from the voice that's talking to another thing that you can do. I love this for worrying. Oh, this is a genius to steal your word move when you catch yourself doing the what ifs. Because we know there's two forms of worrying, right. There's the type of worrying that just destroys you. That's destructive worrying, where you

just ruminate what if, what if? What if? Then there's the positive form of worrying, which is productive because it motivates you to change. When you get stuck in the what if, what if? What if? Interrupted with this five four, three two one, and then go what if it all works out? What if? This turns out to be one of the hardest things I do, but the best decision I've ever made. What if? Placing a bet on myself was the moment my life changed. What if it all

works out? Because you can't argue with that, and it literally stops that sort of cycling because worrying is just a habit that you have. It's like a pathway that you've plowed in your mind, and it's a protection mechanism. You're actually not a procrastinator, you're not a worrior. You're just afraid, yea. And by staying in your mind, you think you're safe. And really what you're doing is you're holding yourself back from living the life that you're meant

to live. I love that that's such a great answer. Yeah, it doesn't be kind to yourself. And and then then the other ones keep the little promises that you make yourself. And there's two simple ways you can practice this that everybody's going to hate. When you set the alarm the night before. I don't believe in having the same wake up time every morning because I think if you have

a normal life, things are constantly changing. And so I think if you were to have one simple habit, which is the night before you go to bed, think about when you need to wake up to truly support yourself, and then intentionally set your alarm. And if you want to get really intentional with the science, here make it like a random odd number. Don't make it six o'clock. Make it six seventeen, because there's a purpose behind that. And then when that alarm rings, don't think about it

like an obligation. I want you to think about it like to promise that you're going to practice keeping. And this is where you can use the five second rule. You're just going to count backwards five four, three two one to interrupt all of the desire in your mind and body to stay in bed, or to hit the snooze button, or to argue against what you need to do. And you're going to push through that resistance and take action. And by getting out of bed simply when you said

you would, you are again behavioral activation therapy. You're acting like a person who keeps their promises and trust yourself. Yes, here's another one. If you just talked about that one, you have to say, ye, have we ever talked about six seventeen before six? I don't even even seventeen. It's so I guess, I don't know. It's so strange when you said, don't set it at six, and you just said in my mind, I was like, yeah, six seventeen, just before you said it no, and yeah, I'm not kidding.

So is that like your wake up time? No, it isn't. I wake up at six. Okay, so why did you think success? No idea. That's what I was asking you if we talked about it before, and I was like, now that the time you wake up or now discuss that in naper Now that is literally yeah, she's gonna say seventeen. That is I'm trying to think. No where in my mind is exempted anyway. But by the point being, I really really like that principle and what I've found,

and you're so right that every day is different. Is I found seep sleeping the same amount of time, yes, is more important than waking up at the same time. Well do you know the research around the snooze button? Yes, yes, yes, okay, okay, so so literally it also when it comes to productivity and focus and fulfillment, it's not when you get up, it's how you get up. And there's all this crazy research Like I'm not some sort of like psycho about

the alarm clock or the snooze button. I personally love sleeping in, but I also know that as somebody that struggled with anxiety for three decades. Lying in bed in the morning or at night is the worst place I can be. Absolutely, that is where the anxiety can pin you down like a gravity blanket. And so understanding that the habit of hitting the snooze button has a detrimental impact on your productivity all day because what happens is when you wake up, your brain is typically ready to

wake up. When you drift back to sleep after hitting the snooze button, your brain drifts back into a sleep cycle, which based on research, takes about seventy five minutes to complete. When the alarm goes off nine minutes later, your brain is now trapped in a sleep cycle, and researchers say it takes you about four hours to snap out of what they call sleep inertia. That impacts your productivity all day long. And so you're complaining then I didn't get

enough sleep and you feel groggy. No, you actually got plenty of sleep. You screwed yourself over by hitting the snooze button, and now your prefrontal cortex can't snap back into operation until you're ready to go. I want to speak about emotionally, which is what you're talking about earlier about you've broken your trust with yourself. And that's why when we set these unrealistic targets. I'm gonna wake up at five am tomorrow, I'm going to wake up at

six whatever it is that's unrealistic for you. And then you hit the snooze button four times. Yeah, and you wake up at the time you would have woken up at anyway. Yep, that's just made you lose faith in yourself over nothing. Right, So that's the totally See, I'm kind of one of these people. Then I sort of like lame goals because I want you to win. You know, I'm just asking for a high five in the mirror. I'm just asking that you roll out of bed five

four three two one. Here's another wonderful one. Make your bed. And here's why. Not because I need you to be a Navy seal, but because when you literally and I'm not even talking pop a quarter off of it, I'm talking throw the blanket across karate, chop a pillow, throw a throw on a diagonal, we're done here kind of thing. Here's why Number one, it's a beautiful gift you can gift yourself because as you walk back into your room,

it's done. You don't see MSS. Your brain sees a person that actually is kind to themselves and follows through on things tonight, when you lay down a dream, you have a nice place to come back to. And this is what I'm talking about with lame lame goals and what I call simple discipline. Simple discipline is roll out of bed when the alarm rings. Simple discipline is make your bed. Simple discipline. I'm even going to make exercise easy. You want to hear, Yeah, so easy. Okay, you're ready

to night. In your closet, get your exercise clothes out, lay them on the floor, put them right in your way so you can't step around them, because then they're there as a trap on your floor the next morning. Again, you don't have to think about it. You're like, oh my gosh, stepping over them, is you breaking a promise? When you pull them on, I know you're more likely to exercise today because they're already on your body. And so but in my book, we're practicing simple things here.

So you get a high five just for pulling the tights on. Man, Like, I'm not even gonna count exercising. If you get the exercise clothes on, We've gotten up we've made our bed, we got our exercise. Now we're gonna high five them. Here, Honey, you just got four wins. You've only been up for twenty seconds. This is the Mel Robbins program. This is how you build trust with yourself by setting really small goals, little tiny promises, because

you're building a new muscle. And the most important promise in all of this is how you treat yourself in the mirror, because, as you know, Jay, that relationship that you have with yourself is the foundation for every relationship that you have. If you can't look yourself in the eye, you will never be able to allow somebody else to love you because you don't first love yourself. If you struggle with people pleasing, that's not about other people, that's

about your insecurity with yourself. So it comes back again to the simple discipline of looking at yourself and learning how to be secure with the one human being you spend your whole life with. And the only way you're going to start being secure with who you are is when you start accepting and loving who you are, no matter where you are, whether you exercise today or not, whether you blew it yesterday or not, whether you really are trying hard and winning or not. I love that

for me. Making my bed also improves my relationship with my wife because she happens to wake up earlier than me. And therefore we have a rule in our house whoever wakes up second does the bed, which means I end up doing the bed. I don't like that rule because my husband gets up first. Yeah, so anyway, I always have to do my bed. But my wife also liked to have like twenty pillows on the bed, so there's more pillows on the bed than there is a bed, and and so I really don't enjoy it because I

have to like organize these pillows. Do the karate chop? Do you have to have a Yeah, I have three pillows, one behind the other. I mean, it's it's like real work. But by the time I finished doing that, I'm like

I can do anything. Yes, I love all these principles you're talking about, But the biggest thing is the theme that's underlying all of them is celebrate, congratulate, build trust, Which you're so right that this if anyone's listening and thinking, oh well, if I celebrate these little things and I'll never do anything big. No, it's it's the other way around. It's that if you build trust with yourself doing these

little things, you'll trust yourself with bigger things. And anyone that you see that's doing big, bold, incredible things today is because they trusted themselves with the tiny, small, incremental changes. And so when Mel saying celebrate just putting the gym clothes on, she's saying that because if you celebrate that, you'll notice that, Hey, I can trust myself for this. Let's talk about celebration because for both of us, and I also see this in you, and I think you

know when we're in Napper with all our friends. I feel that celebration is something that everyone struggles with the more successful they become. And because the goals get bigger, the time length of the next project gets longer because it's harder. It's like launching a TV show as you did, or you wrote another book after five years. There's more pressure this time because the last thing was incredible and now you're doing something bigger. I find we live in

this world where it's easy to stop celebrating. Did you find out or have you always found time for yourself to celebrate your wins and your successes I'm just asking on a personal The honest answer is that I think it wasn't until I discovered the high five habit that I profoundly realized how much self hatred I was dealing with and despite everything else yet well, and this I think is a really big piece of the power of this,

especially if you're somebody who's achievement oriented, and everybody that listens to this podcast feels a big calling and wants to do more in the world and make a bigger difference and a bigger impact. There's a real danger that's very common Jay, that you start to marry or you've always married being worthy or lovable with what you're doing and what you're achieving. And it works both ways in terms of if you don't have the number on the scale, it means again the dust on the mirror, you are

not worthy because you haven't achieved it yet. And for those of us that have achieved some things that we've set out to do, what happens is you find that as soon as you achieve the thing, you actually need to do something else better because it was a thing that you achieved that made you lovable or worthy. And the real trick and this is everything is being able to know and feel in your bones that you are lovable and worthy just because you're breathing. And that was

a huge breakthrough for me. And so no, I never celebrated because I think I was so married to this idea that unless I'm doing or winning or achieving, and it happens so subtly when you're little, because you start to get so much positive praise when you get a good grade, or when you do something at school, or when you make your mates laugh or whatever it might be, that you start to go, oh, that's what love feels like.

Oh if I do that, And so you outsource love and validation to outside things, and I'm here to tell you we all got to learn how to bring it back home and anchor the validation and love that you need where you are right now, every single day. And it's only in discovering this that I had to confront just how much I was beating myself up, just how much I was tearing myself down, and how I was chasing these things because what I actually wanted was to

feel loved. Like if you ask yourself, okay, great, you want to make a million dollars, why there's a feeling that you're looking for from that, and if you can start to work on bringing that feeling into your day to day life for yourself, it changes the way that you go about achieving things Like I didn't even enjoy half the stuff that I did because I was constantly maniacally focused on the things that weren't working rather than the hundred things that were. And the same is true

with everybody's day. You don't even know the number of amazing things you do every day. You feed the dog, high five, you got the kids at school, high five, you read ten pages of the book high five, You said a nice thing to a stranger, high five, You got something done at work, high five, you got through seventy percent of your inbox high five. Instead, you focus and ruminate on the one thing you didn't get to,

and then you use that as evidence. Again, dust on the mirror to see a human being that's not measuring up and never will and all that stuff. They're stupid. Fourth grade teacher said, you must be true, dust on the mirror. No, you need to interrupt this period. Yeah, that is so powerful everything you just said. I was

just nodding along, thinking this is so true. I saw a video recently from a good friend of mine, Jason Goldberg, and he was talking about a study at the Olympics where people who win bronze a happier than those win silver. And so coming third makes you happy than coming second because the people that come second they go, oh, but I was a second away from first, and so they feel disheartened, whereas the person who came third goes, at least I made it on the podium. Yeah, and that's

what you're saying, Yeah, make it to the podium. Yes, put on the clothes or just put on the clothes. You just put on the clothes. But that's making it to the like to me, that's just getting there. It's not us. And actually, what you really hit something when you were saying that about celebration. For me, it's not just about celebration. It's about what we celebrate in our lives. So when we celebrate our birthday, we're celebrating life. When

you're celebrating an achievement, you're still celebrating a thing. Yes, and so celebrating life when you're celebrating your breath, when you're celebrating your life force, your energy, your soul, the ability to love, the ability to be kind, the ability to have relation or exchanges like we're having right now. That's what you celebrate, because if you only celebrate things now, you're waiting for the next thing. And I actually learned

that completely from my wife. Rather whether it was consciously or unconsciously, she didn't even know what she was doing. This was totally all in my own head. But I realized that every time I reached a new external peak or a new thing, I expected to receive more love from her. I expected that she would think something more cool of me, and the answer was she didn't. She loved me the same, and I would always wonder, why does she not love me for this? How does she

not respect me? How does she not feel it? Differently? I mean, look what I'm doing, look what I would. And when I kept working with that thought and I reflect deeply, and I love breaking down my own thoughts and figuring it out, and I really get stuck in there, I realized that my wife loves me for my life

and who I am, not what I do. And so she unintentionally trained me and taught me to disconnect my value from what I do to who I am, which is what she loves me for and I realized that that was so much more beautiful and so much more powerful and so much more meaningful to be loved for who I am. Yes, then what I do and achieve? Yes,

And here's now an even bigger thing. Please you already do this, but as you're listening to Jay, and I want you to actually grasp how profound it would be if you could feel that way about yourself, if you could always just look in the mirror and see a human being that's trying and that's worthy of a high five, and a human being that failed and Okay, we're going to brush it off and that's worthy of a high five. Somebody who is running the marathon of life that you

are going to celebrate every step of the way. And you know, I also want to take this and flip this in the opposite because I think this is where people really get mucked up. This happened in my own marriage, and it's only a recent discovery between Chris and I, and that is that we had the opposite thing happened Jay.

So when Chris and his best friend went into the restaurant business and they poured seven years into it and gave it their go and at the end of the day, they sold it, you know, for pennies on the dollar to the next investor, and they did not return the profit that they had hoped they would return to their investors. Now it was interesting about watching this all go down, is that our best friend, who is Chris's partner, was able to leave the experience and go, okay, entrepreneurship. I'm

so proud of us. We put in so much work. We built something amazing, We had an incredible brand, we were incredible leaders. Did we return the profit? No, but that's not everything in life. And he moved on. My husband could not. He literally said, because I didn't achieve, because I failed, I am a failure who is not worthy of love. And for seven years he has walked into a bathroom with the dust that has said I am a failure. And so as you have been looking

for why doesn't she love me more? Somebody who fails goes, how can you still love me? And it's only until it doesn't matter how much I love the guy, doesn't matter how much I build him up. And you know, I'm so proud of everything that he's done and all the stuff that Chris is doing and he's had a massive breakthrough in this and part of it is through the high five habit because of the resistance. But I can't do that, Loot, look at the failure that I've been.

If you don't love yourself, you won't allow somebody else to love you. Yeah. And so when you can separate what you're doing from your soul and your intention and your spirit and your humanity and you can stand with yourself every morning, and that high five doesn't necessarily become celebration. It becomes acceptance, and it becomes compassion, and it becomes acknowledgement, and then it becomes slowly celebration and momentum and forward

energy that you need when life drags you down. And so it's really a profound point you just made that it's only when you love yourself for breathing, for living, for being just as you are, that that level of acceptance that we so want from everybody else. And I'm telling you you have an opportunity to do it for yourself by keeping your promises, by being kind yourself, by standing before yourself and seeing a human being who needs you and who loves you and who's going to be

with you your whole life. That's beautiful. It's amazing just just sitting there listening to you talk about that, and when I'm thinking about what you said With Chris, we recently celebrated your anniversary, which is incredible. Congratulations. I mean that's goals. Like me and my wife would be married at five together for eight. When I hear you twenty five, I'm like, cher all the wisdom, give it to me. Tell me about what it's been like learning from each other,

especially seeing as your job is teaching. Yeah, it's coaching, it's working with CEOs and organizations and people and of course millions of people online, but you're working with so many companies as well. How has it been for him and for you to learn from each other? Has that

been easy as they've been harder? When you talk about the seven years and you're saying that broke partly through the high five habit for him, I love hearing that because that makes me go, yes, like, not only does this work for everyone, it works for the people closest to you, which he says so much. Can you tell us a bit about yeah that well, you know, and also you know, to Chris's credit, he also got into therapy,

and you know, he did the work. He did the work, and he's started Amend's retreats to help other men degree to do the work. And we've done a lot of work together, which I think is really important. It's so important to do work on yourself because it's not your partner's job to make you happy. It's your job to figure out how to bring the happiest and healthiest and

kindest you into the relationship. Because when you can do that, you can build like a nurturing crucible if that's even the right word where you is that the right way? Don't even a way? You can build like a pot. I don't know that that sounds very unglamorous, but we

camp a lot, you know. I think the hardest thing, and it took me a long time, was realizing that the most important thing in a relationship, if you want it to go the distance, is being kind and actually staying interested in the other person's experience and point of view. Like the challenge of being in a relationship that long

as you think you know somebody. Yeah, And the fact is, I don't care how great your relationship is or how bad it is or whatever, but how great it is in particular, there are parts of the person you're with that you don't know, because even they don't know that totally. And I don't even think Chris realized the extent to which he was subconsciously pile driving himself with his mindset. And it didn't matter that I thought he was the most incredible person in the world, or the greatest father,

or wonderful spouse or my biggest cheerleader. He didn't feel like those things. And so I would say being kind listening. I think also making requests of each other are really important. So instead of pointing out what's wrong, think about what you need. Because even though Chris and I have been together for twenty seven years now married twenty five, I'm still not a mind reader. And when you can make requests about what you need instead of letting it get

to you and then acting out, that changes everything. That's incredible. I love hearing that. Thank you for sharing that, and thank you for opening up. I met Chris for the first time only about a month ago. Now he's wonderful, Like he's just such a gentleman, so kind, so sweet, so loving, very warm. I mean, we had so many beautiful interactions and conversations while we were in Napa together, and I just love seeing you both continuing to, you know,

really just show what real strength looks like as a couple. Well, you know, Jay, I think one of the other things that has been fascinating is you've got to leave room for each other to grow. Yeah, so we've also gone through tremendous evolutions as a couple where you know, for a while, we were both working and we were sort of fifty fifty in terms of what we earned, and then Chris started to out earn me, and then I

kind of took the second role. And then next thing you know, he's going into entrepreneurship and I'm sort of growing in the corporate market. Next thing, you know, we find ourselves financially imploding, eight hundred thousand dollars in debt, horrible experience twelve years ago, about to lose everything. And what was interesting is it was that crisis that flipped us into the right roles. Chris as you met, his name is Christopher Robbins. He's like the world's most nurturing man.

You know, Winnie the Poo's owner for crying out loud. He doesn't care about money and building things and fancy stuff. He would live in a yurt if I would want to. I do not do that, Chris, I do not. It was through that that I discovered my own ambition that I actually do care about building things. I do want to go out and play that game in business. I

freaking love it. And it happened at the perfect time, because it was at the moment when we had kids in middle school and they needed somebody more nurturing than me to be home and they needed somebody. And so our kids have had the greatest gift because they've seen our partnership evolved. They've seen a dad that it stayed home for a while, They've seen a mom off in the world building something. And the biggest message is that you're only going to stay together if you continue to talk.

One of the things that our therapists said to us that I think about all the time, So steal this. It's really easy when you get along to do the logistics and transactions of life, but you can start to find yourself very sequestered from each other, but together and in rolls, but never going deeper. And so I think when you notice that either you're not growing or your partner's not growing, that's when it's really important to start turning toward one another. Yeah, that's so true. That's so true.

I've always said, like for me right now, watching rather You grow is like my favorite thing in the world because she's almost just in the last eighteen months really discovered her purpose. She's always been very skilled and talented and had lots of strengths, but it was in this last eighteen months that I saw her really embrace herself. High five yeah, yeah, yeah, she really got to that point. Yeah, high five herself and to really claim that and own that.

And it's the most fun things in your partner find that. And I was like, we're going to clear up your whole schedule so you can just do that because I see that that momentum's coming for you, and I think often what it is, and you talk about this. I have a few more questions I want to ask you, But it's this idea of often, even in our partners,

you talk about jealousy. In chapter eight, you talk about a chapter which you call wise life so easy for them and not for me, And I've noticed that this sometimes can even creep I want to talk about it broadly but it can also creep into our own marriage. In relationship for sure, where people think, oh, well I do, and you know, there's there's pros and constants. So obviously in our life, I was the one who built my purpose and career and Riley was building her skills and

her strengths. And it's so easy to get caught up in the mindset of well, I didn't have someone who is going to help me out when I started out because I didn't. And you can even have that in your own relationship, and it can be so poisonous and toxic in your own relationship. But you also talk about how jealousy can be used as a tool. Oh yeah, So I wanted to hear about that because I think we do live in a world today, whether it's in our own relationships, whether it's broadly, we always look, oh

it's easy for them, it's not for me. Oh everything's working out for them. It's not for me. I work even harder than that person does, but dead winning, I'm not. I'm more talented and skilled in that person. But so when you're how do you use that as a tool? Okay, So I love that you asked us because this is a powerful tool. First of all, we all misunderstand jealousy. You think jealousy is hatred. That's not what it is.

All jealousy's desire, That's all that it is. And when it starts to bubble up and consume you, and it used to consume me like crazy. I used to be just like that person that you were talking about, Jay, jealous of everybody. Jay. I hate Jay. Jay has a podcast, Oh for I hate Jay. Jay has been at this longer than Look at all those followers that Jay has. Oh, of course he lives in La of course he's got a sort of like I mean, I could just whoo spin it all. But here's the thing. This is the

coolest part about jealousy. Ready, you cannot be jealous of someone or something that you don't truly desire. I'm not the least bit jealous of somebody who has the most extraordinary apartment in New York City. I don't want to live there. It's not meant for me. Jealousy is a clue, it's a directional signal. It's a dot on the map of your life, and the desire is blocked by fear or comparison, or insecurity or stress. Or whatever. And so

when you start to recognize, oh, interesting, there's jealousy. Well, I'm jealous of Jay. He's got this incredible podcast that's reaching millions of people. He's making this huge difference. What is it about that? Is it about Ja? Yeah? No, but really what it's about is I've been wanting to do a podcast forever. So instead of aiming that jealousy out at the world or at myself, aim it into inspiration,

Aim it into motivation. Recognize and give yourself permission that if you unpack whatever it is that you're jealous of, I'm jealous of their marriage. What is it about it? Is it the fact that they seem to have a date night? Is it the fact that they're really kind to each other? Explore it, lean into it, give yourself permission to have that thing, and then get off your ass and go make it happen. That's it, because here's

the thing. Your jealousy is not going away, and it will either continue to consume you or you are going to blow the lid off that block desire and you are going to empower yourself to start moving toward what you want. That's how you do it. And again, this high five habit is so important because if you stand in front of the mirror and go I'm too late, I'd just be a copycat. All these people see you dumb, like this is what the beatdown is. If you go nope,

you high five yourself. You're like, I see you. You are a little bit later than everybody else. Great, They're guideposts on the map of your life. All these people are your co creators. Everybody you're jealous of is literally somebody that is running point for you. But you haven't allowed yourself the permission to unpack it and actually question and go on an inquiry that's so rewarding of well, wow, what is really calling me about this? Yeah? I think

that's so true. And I love seeing jealousy that way. And you said something there was really important that I want people to catch on if they didn't. Is jealousy is a tool when you're self aware, Like you are self aware, I don't want an apartment in New York. Hence, if someone has a stunning apartment in New York, I don't feel jealous. But a lot of us our jealousy is just scattered because we don't know what we want or what our dream truly is so, then everyone's dream

feels exciting and better than ours. And that's why I think what you said is so true when people actually can develop a little bit of self awareness of what is my genuine dream, Because I remember I talk a lot about like when you don't find your purpose, you're jealous of everyone. And when you know your purpose, then you become jealous in your space of your purpose, and

at least it narrows it down. But it's like when you don't know, It's like I could look at a singer and be like, oh I wish I could sing, like, oh I should have had that. Or if i'm and I know, I can't seem to save my life. So when I have that self awareness, I can detach. Okay,

don't need to be jealous of Justin Bieber. I'm not Justin Bieber, That's okay, right, right, Or like Christiano Ronaldo, I love soccer, I adore soccer, but I was never good enough to play soccer in a for the Premier League club or whatever, So I can let go of that. And that's what I think self awareness is so important,

is because otherwise jealousy will just drive you crazy. And I think that's where it starts that jealousy can be a tool when you actually know yourself well and jealousy, let's take this a step further, actually can help you know yourself. Yeah, because I think what Justin Bieber and you know the soccer player have in common is they are living full out. Yes, their life forces on display. Yes,

that's what you're attracted to. Yes. And so if you were to even take all your scattered jealousy and sit with a cup of amazing tea and calm yourself down, and you know, like we haven't even talked about high fiving your heart, which is a way to be flip your nervous system into a calm state and map it all out and be like, oh, interesting, all the people that I'm jealous of that I follow online, that I

obsess over, that I like their posts, it's their life force. Yeah, it's their artistry, yes, yes, And so that is there is there is a common theme there, and it can help you gain the self awareness. Absolutely. I want to ask you one last question before we get the final five. This is about a chapter that you call how about I start tomorrow? And I love this because I think so many people will be listening to this and be like, Okay, tomorrow I'm going to start doing yes and and that's

you know, we all know that. Okay, next Monday, Okay, no, twenty twenty two. I'm gonna read this book January twenty twenty two. Right, people, we start thinking like that, tell us about how that mindset doesn't help us do it tomorrow? Yeah? Are you kid? So? First of all, motivation is complete garbage. Everybody's sitting around waiting to feel like a jay. And this is a recipe for never seeing your dreams come true and dying with a lot of regret. Thank you

very much, welcome to my TED talk. This has been very inspiring. Now, seriously, I want you to understand that you will never feel ready to do things that scare you. You will never feel ready to jump off the cliff. You will never feel ready to take that leap. And the reason why is based on science and research. Your brain is designed to protect you and change requires risk, and so you are protecting yourself by saying maybe tomorrow. This is where the five second rule comes in superhandy.

So if you are constantly procrastinating, you probably have a bias towards thinking, and you can use the five second rule to literally push yourself to take action. All you're going to do is count backwards five four three two one. That's it. I know. It's as dumb as the high five. It's as simple as the high five. It has profound research behind it because what you're doing when you start counting backwards and you have to count backwards, it does

not work. If you count up, doesn't work because counting backwards five four three two one requires you to focus. When you focus, you flip the switch and your prefrontal cortex turns on. This is a starting ritual that interrupts the patterns of overthinking, a fear, of anxiety, of procrastination, of comparison that are making you go at tomorrow not today. I don't feel like it five four three two one.

Your prefrontal cortex turns on. That's a part of the brain you need to either learn new behavior or take action that's inspired. So now when you get to one, you got a shot at doing something different. So move. And here's the real secret to this. The second you started counting, you actually made a decision to change. So the counting is the trojan horse to the bigger thing. You're avoiding five four three two one launches you through the resistance, and it pushes you into action. That's the

only way you're going to change. Sitting there listening to us, Lightning is not going to strike you on the couch. Jay and I are not going to show up and kick you or drag you out of your house and make you on that run. If you want to change your life, make a decision to change your life. And you know, I'm going to say something that I really hope happens from you listening to Jay and I today.

I think it's very easy to sit in this moment in your life and to look back at your life and to see how everything that's ever happened to you, positive and negative, is a dot on the map of your life that has led you here. True power is knowing that this moment right here is also a dot on your map, and that this moment, too, is connecting you forward on the map of your life towards something

extraordinary that hasn't happened yet. And you can either sit here and listen to this and let this dot come and go, or you can wake the heck up and realize at some point the map takes you to a final destination, and we don't know when that is. But if you want to change your life, you've got to make a decision to change your life, and sitting around and waiting to feel ready is not the decision I

want you to make. So when you're done listening to the five four, three, two one, I want you to turn toward that thing that you've always dreamt of, that you've been waiting to do, and you go and you move toward the thing that is meant for you, because that's the only way you're going to get there. The one and only Mel robins everyone the high five habit. Mel. We end every episode with the final five, which suits

you perfectly. With the five second rule and the high five five, it's like we planned it and this is our fast five. Every questions be answered in one word to one sentence. Okay, so I give one yeah, okay. So the first question is, what is the best advice you've ever received? Never leave a bathroom without high fiving yourself in a mirror. I love it all right. Question number two, what is the worst advice you've ever received? Someone else can make you happy. Absolutely, They can make

you a cup of coffee. Yeah, I can't make you happy. A lot of people hear that. It's very true. I didn't get to ask you this, probably, but I want to hear about it. Tell us about high fiving your hand on your heart. Oh, this is incredible. So this comes from research from doctor Judy Willis. And this is why this is so important right now. I think everybody's nervous system is in a state or fight or flight.

If you feel constantly exhausted, stressed out, you can't focus, you're on edge, you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, and honestly, what we've just lived through, that human body is not built to sustain that level of uncertainty for that amount of time. So what you're going to do to high five your heart is we're going to teach you how to flip off your fight or flight nervous system and flip on your parasympathetic, calm, cool nervous system.

And so here's how you do. It's very simple. You're gonna take your hands and push them on the center of your chest, and you're gonna take a deep breath, blow it out, and then you're going to repeat these three sentences. I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm loved, I'm loved. And some mornings you might need to do it fifty three times. What's happening and what do you feel? Jay? When you do that? I feel, I mean, on a physical level, I feel like my

heart right slowing down. I feel like my body's become more relaxed in an emotional or mental capacity, I just feel I send some more stone as sense of more clarity and certainty. Exactly what you're doing on a scientific level is you're tapping into a treasure in your body called the vegas nerve. Now you talk about this all the time. It runs from your seat to the top of your head, through every major organ, through your vocal cords. There are lots of ways you can strength strengthen the

vegas nerve. It is the on off switch between your stressed out nervous system and your cool, grounded one. And so every morning, I want you to high five your heart. I want you to take a deep breath and start your day by saying I am okay, I'm safe, and I'm loved, and repeat it, and repeat it and repeat it until you feel yourself come back into your body, you feel the stress level decrease. And the fact of the matter is if you can hear yourself even thinking

those three sentences, it's true. We had a woman who wrote to us from a homeless or of domestic violence shelter, and she said that she's had tremendous childhood abuse. She's just escaped a very abusive relationship. She's lost everything. She said, for five days, she's been waking up and high fiving her heart, telling herself that I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved. She's been starting her day with a high five in

the mirror. And she said, after just five days, I realize I have a very long road ahead of me. But now I know at least I still have myself. Wow, it's incredible. It's absolutely beautiful. It's funny because when I was reading by then the book, I didn't realize it. So I have a habit of that's probably one of my go to hand gestures in my day to day life,

and I do it usually when someone thank me. So if I bump into someone on the street and they're like, hey, Ja, I listen to the podcast, I really love it, i'd always say thank you, so much like, that's a very nat that's what I read about it. I was like, I didn't know about I do it because it's just a natural thing for me. But I literally put an I'd be like, thank you so much. That means the world to me. I'm so grateful for that. Like, that's that's and I do that all the time. It's it's

like my go to hand gesture. Not that I've trained it or thought of it subconsciously been what I've done. And now that I know that it does that, I'm like, wow, Like it's it's incredible to think that some of these things actually happened quite subconsciously and you know, naturally. So anyway, that was something I had to ask about. Okay, question number four what is how would you define your current purpose? Oh, it's a cracking the wall of darkness that people live

in and letting a little light in. And the fifth and final question, if you could create one rule or law or have it that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be. I'm not sure it would definitely be because of the impact in my life. Never leave a bathroom without high fiving the human being you see in the mirror. Yeah, I love that I'm going to be doing it every day, this week and forever. I'm going to hope that it continues to last and last and last as a habit. But I'm so grateful

to you, Mal. We could talk for hours. There's so much more in this book to unpack, and I want every single person who's been listening or watching this podcast to go out and grab a copy of the High five Habit. Take control of your life with one simple habit. As Mals talked about this podcast, there are way more than one habit inside this book. It's not just one habit. There are so many beautiful gems. And I always believe when you deeply study a habit, it becomes easier to

implement it. You can hear about something, or read about an article, or hear that little nugget of wisdom, But if you study a habit, the implementation is that much deeper. Mel, you have a High five challenge. Yes, yes, Jay's going to do it. So it's a five day challenge to help you break through and wipe away the dust on or the mud in my case, with the elbow grease on the mirror. And it's five days of literally teaching and tools. And here's the best part, a massive global

community that's going to be high fiving you back. It's free. Come play with us, come be with us. Let us give you the lift that you need right now, because you not only need it, you deserve it. That's amazing. Thank you everyone who's been listening watching. I want to make sure that you tag me and Mel on Instagram with all the reflections, all the insights, anything that Mel said that resonated with you. Please tag Mel and I on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook, whatever platform you're on.

We love seeing what resonated. Do you what connected with you? And don't forget you can help someone else with this by just passing it on, Just simply sharing it is you taking part in impacting the world and improving the world around you. Share it your mother, your father or sister, a friend, a partner, or your children. It could be an amazing habit to them for them to train, just starting right now. Imagine they had this since they were five or six, or seven or ten. It could be

amazing to see where it goes for them. So please do not deprive anyone of the growth that's possible for them by resisting pressing share or passing this along to a friend. Well, thank you so much again for making the effort to be with us physically, for writing this beautiful book, showing up in the way that you do, and sharing your energy. And I'm so grateful that we got I'm doing it now. I'm so grateful that we got to spend this time together. And I am so

excited for this to get out into the world. I can't believe the impact it's already had and the impact that it's going to have. So, as Brendan would say, I send something amazing it's about to happen. Thank you, and thank you for being one of those people ahead of me that I used to be jealous but I now see is a light on the path. I love you. I love you. It is such a joy to watch you live your purpose and light the way for so

many of us. I am honored to be your friend and to walk beside you and celebrate you every step of the way. I love it. I love it, and it's actually totally the opposite way around I made. I made a really important decision about a company that I worked with based on you. Oh there was a great one and so and so we could talk, but there was. The admiration was very mutual. I was I loved what was happening in your world, in your career, and I

made decisions based on that. So awesome. I just want you to know that, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you want even more videos just like this one, make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here. I'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book, Think Like a Monk from Think Like a monkbook dot Com. Check below in the description to make sure you ordered today.

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