DO THIS First Thing In The Morning To Achieve Your MOST AMBITIOUS Goals! | Mel Robbins

Mel Robbins, welcome back to the show. Tom, I feel like I'm getting my own drugs. I'm so excited to see you. Very excited. Let's jump right into the deep end. What are three things that very successful people run every day that helps them be successful? They get their ass out of bed. Uh, they You and I both struggled with that. Oh my god, I still struggle with it. So do I. It's I don't think people believe me. It is a thing every day in my life. Every day of my life. It's such a trip. Well, I I understand why for me anyway. I don't know the reason why it's hard for you, but there are there are levels of reasons why it is so hard to get out of bed for me and why you have to get your ass out of bed. Um, and I'll explain why it's important in a second, but first I want to explain why it's actually difficult for me. So, number one, from a physiological standpoint, it was very helpful for me to learn that your cortisol levels are at their highest when you first wake up in the morning. And so, cortisol being the stress hormone, it's also something that can then flood your body with a sense of like worry or heaviness or overwhelm. And so, knowing that that was just a fact in terms of what's happening in your body was helpful. Second, for me personally, part of my childhood trauma was having a incident where, you know, somebody did something to me in the middle of the night. And that encoded an experience in my body that is triggered by waking up. Because at the age of I guess I must have been like nine, I had an experience where I woke up one morning and an older kid had climbed into my bed and done something. And the second I woke up, Tom, I was in full alarm state. Fight or flight kicked in. I disassociated. And I knew something bad had happened. And then I had a second response, which is did I did something wrong. Right. And so you know, you talk a lot on the show about habits and how habits have three parts, the trigger, the pattern, the reward. Waking up in the morning is a trigger, Tom, for my body to remember this experience of feeling something's wrong. So, that's the second reason. And the third reason is is because I have [ __ ] amazing sheets. And my bed is super comfortable. And my husband uh used to be next to me, but he would he now gets up at like 5:45. He just rolls right out of bed. And I love to just stay in that bed, Tom, under those sheets. It's so cozy. It's so snugly. It's absolutely amazing. And so, that's why it's hard for me. I don't freaking feel like getting up. And then on top of it, and you and I both know this, that an object that is resting will stay resting unless there is a force that acts upon it to get it to move. And so, it is always hard for me, and how I've resolved this is by basically realizing that there are a few things that I will never feel like doing. I will never feel like unloading the dishwasher. I will never feel like folding uh clean clothes. I will never feel like cleaning that damn cat box or picking up the dog poop in the yard. Yeah. And I don't ever feel like getting out of bed. And I still have to do it. Yeah, it's interesting. So, I think for me, my cortisol levels are too low. Oh. So, whatever it is that gets people out of bed from a physiological level, I don't have that. So, I've always felt to me it feels like the the neurochemistry of sleep is slow to be flushed out of my system. Maybe it's just that the cortisol doesn't pump enough. And so, getting out of bed just seems like this Herculean task because even if there's something I'm excited to do, I find myself still wanting to lay in bed. And then the whole warm and cozy thing, yeah, that goes a long way. Like even now, I will if I'm sleeping alone, like Lisa's traveling right now, so I'm sleeping alone. So, I always wake up before Lisa. So, I can't turn the AC off. I need it to be cold when I sleep. Now, how cold do you keep your bedroom? 68°. So, I keep mine between 66 and 68, and that's also part of the problem. The bed is warm. Yep. And it's like climbing into an ice pack to to throw the sheets off. Yes. I give myself 10 minutes to get out of bed. 10 minutes? So, yeah, yeah, yeah. I That for me, going from 4 or 5 hours to 10 minutes was like, "Oh my god." Well, that is a huge thing. for me, like 10 minutes is pretty good. I try not to fall back asleep is the honest answer. So, I I when I wake up, even though I've woken up naturally cuz I don't use an alarm. use an alarm. I'm like, like, it it's I wake up rough. Like Lisa in the beginning of our relationship, it was really almost contentious because I was so grumpy in the mornings. I'm like, you don't understand. Like, whatever the the chemistry is of sleep, I have a hard time shucking it off. And I remember I heard a joke one time, I'm going to totally bastardize this, but the guy was like, uh to all you morning people, what the [ __ ] are you talking about? He's like, I don't even want to talk. Like, what are you people going on about? You're so happy, you're so smiling. I was like, yes, that's exactly how I feel. So, everything just feels uh when I wake up. So, anyway, I give myself 10 minutes to get out of bed. And so, when you're in bed, Yep. are you thinking about something? Are you looking at the ceiling? Are you like, what are you doing? covers. So, this would, I think, surprise everybody. I sleep completely bundled up under the covers. Like like with the pillow overhead? Uh not the pillow, but the blankets. Oh, see, I put pillows over my head and I make a little breathing hole right here. It's like a safety thing, I think. I couldn't I couldn't have that on my face. On my body that would feel nice, but not on my face. Uh so, I'm under the covers and now this isn't true historically, but for the last probably 2 years, I sleep with a book playing in my headphones. A book While you're sleeping? While I sleep the entire night. It is incredible. What? And I don't This isn't one that I necessarily recommend, but if people struggle to stay asleep, so my I fall asleep easily. I have a hard time staying asleep. So, I will wake up three times a night every single night. The third one being the final time I wake up. Yep. And I have to switch my headphones out so they don't die. And I have three sets of headphones. So, headphone one I fall asleep and that's in-ear, headphone two in-ear, headphone three over the ear. You sleep with headphones or So, are you on your back? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it is It is unbelievably comforting. I can't even tell you. the same book? Uh well, no. It changes once I finish the book. Okay. But I'll read it in these little increments cuz I have to keep rewinding it. And don't worry, we will get to the other two things that amazingly successful people do. But yes, so it's the same book Okay. until it's done. I read it in these tiny little increments. It's a specific kind of book. What kind of book? It has to be a book like Have you ever read like a biography of Lincoln? Which happens to be what I'm reading now. And they'll spend like 17 pages on what the grass was like in his front yard. And so, it's like you don't have to like really scrutinize every sentence. You can sort of drift in and out. And so, what ends up happening is I drift and then I'm gone. And I'll wake up and let's say I started on chapter two, I wake up and it's like chapter nine. So, I'm like, okay, I know to go back to chapter two. And then I fall asleep again. And then I wake up again. I go back to usually chapter two. And then I'll sleep. So, when I wake up, I've got the book still playing. So, then I'm like, well, I'm interested. I'll turn off the AC so it starts warming up. I stay under the blankets so I start and I'll even pull another blanket over me so I I getting too warm. Yeah. Then I'm like, cool. My 9 minutes and 42 seconds are up. I need to cuz I I have a rule. I have to be standing up before the 10th minute hits. Okay. And so I'm up out of bed before the 10th minute hits, but that that has worked like a charm for me. Wow. I This is very complicated. I've been sitting here about the management that you have to do around this. But if it you know, but I think that's the most important thing about advice is everybody's looking for the silver bullet when in fact it's got to work for you. Yeah. That would never work for me. I'm already starting to think about why I sleep on this ear and what about the headphones and I'd forget to charge them and then I'd be awake and I'd be staring at the ceiling and and so that's that's fascinating. Um you know, one of the things that I also got from what you were saying is that because of the cortisol like flying through my system and because I am somebody that has had a very dysregulated nervous system meaning I have sort of lived life with the accelerator on. On edge. That when I would wake up and I would feel that wave of like being on edge it it had a very weird effect of not motivating me to get out of bed, but pinning me there. And ironically intellectually I know and this is one of the reasons why it's important to get up because if you can get up, you can start moving and if you start moving, you can keep moving and as you move the chemistry changes and your mood shifts and within 5 minutes you feel different even if it's just like a little incremental bit of difference. Even though I know that, the feeling in the body was so heavy that I thought I'll just lay here and hopefully it'll go away and it just gets worse. And that's why I asked you what you do in those 10 minutes because one of the reasons why I say get out of bed is because most people reach for their phone. And most people win the battle for success, for dreams, for mental health, for happiness, for confidence in the first 30 seconds of being awake because they reach for the phone and they immediately direct their attention at other people's lives. Yeah. And so that's why I say, I know nobody will I when I tell people don't look at your phone, leave your phone out of the hand and then everyone's like and then they go and do it. But if you just get out of bed immediately, you got a fighting chance to be awake enough to not do that. Yeah. And so I think most people if they're struggling with being successful or happy or whatever, I guarantee you you give your attention to social media or your phone before you've done the second thing and so now we're on to the second thing which is set a freaking intention for the day. Set a mark for what's one thing that matters to you. What is the one thing that you're going to make progress on today? And that one thing could be how you're going to show up with your family. It could be today I'm getting to that that gym or it could be some project at work that you're going to move the needle on or it could be some habit that you've learned on Impact Theory that today is the day I'm going to do that thing that I learned from Tom and you're going to do it. And it's so important for you to direct your mind that this matters to me because your mind is paying attention. And if you set a little habit in place and successful people do this, you have something that matters to you because the other thing about successful people is we're all [ __ ] busy. And we have a million things going on and the second that we look at our phone or we walk through the front door of our business or we step into the kitchen, other people will now need you and you will most likely spend the rest of your day unless you have a huge staff and you've got amazing boundaries and you got a light a lot of white space in your calendar and that is not me, you will spend the rest of your day, Tom, reacting to everybody else's stuff. Yep. And so if you can get into the habit of going today, the most important thing for me to make progress on is X. You have directed to your mind that this thing matters. Now, if you can actually inch it forward before you look at your phone, before you start your work day, before you start responding to everybody else, you will start to develop a superpower because you will see yourself prioritizing what matters to you. And that's critical. So for anybody with a side hustle, do not be working on that thing just at night when you get home. Your dreams, your business, it deserves the first 10 minutes of the morning. And if you literally just lay like one brick on that path between where you are and where you want to go, that one 10 minute of effort every single day on the thing that matters most to you, that changes everything over time. Because I think most people are struggling with the fact that you have all these things that you want to do, but your life is organized in the exact opposite of what is important to you. That you've let everybody else dictate how you spend your time. You've let everybody else kind of take over your day and you haven't done the basics of waking up, get moving, think about what matters to you and if you can, just inch it forward. You know, there's even research about this. Uh I know you've talked about this, too, the the progress principle, which they studied extensively at Harvard Business School. That when they look at very successful people and they asked them, okay, you know, what makes for a fulfilling week? And they were specific to work, but I think this applies more generally. What made for a fulfilling week for most people that are successful is I made progress on something that matters to me. Yeah. I felt a sense of control and progress over the things that I care about. And so, if you really are someone, and this used to be me for sure, where you feel like you're last on the list, you never have time to get to what's important, that everybody else's needs come first, that years keep going by and you're not seeing yourself make the changes that you want to make, or not make the money you want to make, or not launch that business, or start that thing, take a look at the first three or four things you do in the morning. And see where you put your attention, because I guarantee you, it is not aligned with what you actually care about. And so, if you can grab that back, you can do the third thing. And the third thing for me is it's sort of this combination, I call it aligned action. And that is that successful people act before they feel ready, they act like the person they want to be instead of the person that they feel like today, that they you know, when you talk about this, too. This is the philosophy that you believe in, which is uh behavioral activation therapy. Act like the person you want to become. Can you give me an example of that? Oh, yeah. So, I'm launching a podcast. I've been thinking of Talk about not taking your own advice, okay? I Most people don't know this, but I got my start in the media business. This is my first taste of the media business in 2008 by hosting a local call-in radio show on Saturday mornings in Boston, Massachusetts. not know that. Yes, I paid for my kids' braces by reading Invisalign ads for a dentist in Boston that I still go to. Shout out to Dr. Ronkin. Uh he did not pay me to say that. That was a long time ago. Um And I loved that show, Tom. I freaking loved it. Why did I have a radio show? I'll tell you why. Because for those of you that have seen my first appearance here with Tom, this was the period in my life where Chris's restaurant was going off the rails. We were nearly a million dollars in debt. There were liens on our house. I had lost my job. I needed money. That's why I had that job. It paid $25 an hour for 2 hours every Saturday. And I felt like the world's worst mom because every other parent was at town soccer. Somebody else, thank you, thank you, thank you to the Graces for driving our kids. They were taking our kids to soccer for us while I could go host this radio show and Chris was doing whatever he could to save the business. That show was a lifeline. I would talk to real people every single day. It made me feel connected to people. It made me It gave me a sense of purpose. I loved the intimacy of it. And so, Evers and that show eventually grew and it became syndicated. And then I won something called the Gracie Award for my coverage of Trayvon's murder. And that got CNN's attention. And they called me and said, "Hey, you know, we would love to have you be a legal analyst here." And so that then got me on CNN. And ever since I left radio, I have missed it. And I've been wanting to get back to it. And in the back of my mind, especially after I wrote the 5 Second Rule, I kept thinking, "I need to launch a podcast. I need to launch a podcast. I love podca- I I I have I I I need to do this." And it mattered so much to me. I was so like drawn to it, Tom, that I think that often times when the dream is such a call, the excuses match the desire for it, right? And it was never the right time. It just never I just talked myself out of it over and over and over and over and over again. And so finally, like 18 months ago, I literally woke up one morning, I had my own wake up call, and I'm like, "That's it. Like, you're going to let another 10 years go by unless you make a [ __ ] decision to get started." How'd you get started? So you decide you're going to do it, and like take people into the weeds a bit. Yeah, okay. This is where I think people go off the rails. They they're sitting at home thinking, "Yeah, I want to start a podcast as well." And I want to hear cuz I know that you end up doing it on a way more professional stage, but walk people through what Who'd you call? Was it a relationship that you built 20 years ago? I want people to follow that. Yeah, so first things first, I went to my friend Google. Honest to God, even though I know Tom and I know Lisa, I was too embarrassed to ask you. Because, you know, you guys are like out here with all these millions of subs, and you like been doing the show for a while, and same thing with Lewis. Like, you know, you and I have some amazing friends, and oftentimes I find that going to people that already seem like they're at the top of the top, that's intimidating. Because it it magnifies, at least for somebody who's got a lot of insecurity like me, it magnifies the distance between where you are starting and where somebody is years down the road. Because part of your genius, Tom, is that like it's easy to look at what Tom's built and forget the fact that this dude has been studying film since he went to USC for film school. This guy is a insanely successful entrepreneur that's bringing all of that sweat equity and learning to the table. This is somebody that's dedicated himself to like years of figuring this out and sampling and editing. And so I personally find that when you go to somebody that's already there, it can be a little discouraging. So I went to Google, and I'm like, "How do you start a podcast?" Honest to God, because I'm smart enough to know it's different than radio. And I didn't even know what equipment people have. I didn't know anything about okay, do you go to like how do you put a podcast up? Do you put it everywhere? I don't know. Like is there a form that you put the title on and the captions and then do you send it somewhere? Like I know how to upload a video to YouTube. I know how to but I don't know anything about this market and so I went to Google. Um you're going to laugh at me but I bought a course about podcasting. I'm not laughing at all. Um I uh studied a bunch of videos about the type of equipment that people bought. Um I then just started stalking people that are doing it and I started to say to myself, okay, what does somebody that already has a podcast, what do they do that I'm not currently doing? And so the first step is obviously learn about it. Identify a group of people that serve as what I call your lights on the path. And so lights on the path are people that are anywhere from one step ahead of you to 10 years ahead of you. And these are all people that can guide you forward if you study what they did. And most of them, by the way, we live in the most magical period of time. You have no [ __ ] excuse for not walking toward what you want. I realize it may be harder for some of us with mental health issues. I realize that not everybody starts at the same starting line because of bias and all kinds of things that can happen to people but the bottom line is through your actions and attitude, you can create anything you [ __ ] want. And look, I'm sitting here saying I've been wanting to do a podcast for 8 years and for 6 years I was nothing but excuses for why I couldn't get started. And then finally I'm like, [ __ ] it, I got to start. And so you start by Google the topic. Number one, become a student of what you want to be first. That's the mindset. What can I learn? What are people doing that is calling to me? What are people doing that I don't like? And so as I started being a student of this, really important. That's why I say Google. Google is a search engine. Become a student of what you want to learn about or launch in your life. And there's a bazillion books. There's master classes. There's free videos. There's workshops. And what's so cool, people like Tom are unpacking this [ __ ] for you with people. And so you can also hear people's stories. And so I probably just immersed myself in it, Tom. And I'd say the first person that I called was Rich Roll. And Rich Roll is uh a really good friend of mine. Amazing human. Amazing human being. And he was really cute. Uh I called and said, "Okay, I'm going to do this thing. What would you tell me knowing everything you know, having been doing the podcast for 7 years?" And you know, interesting about Rich, that guy is an artist, incredible storyteller, amazing uh story, you know, personal story. His hands are in every aspect of every aspect of that podcast. Like that is Rich's gift to the world. And what he said to me is he said, "Turn on a mic." It's good advice. "Turn on a mic. Start recording [ __ ] But I'm not ready. But I don't have the equipment. But I haven't done this. But no. If you want to do this thing, turn on the mic and start taping episodes. And then listen to it. And they're going to sound like [ __ ] And you're going to realize this is a hell of a lot harder than you think it is. Mhm. And so here's the second thing. So But one, become a student, right? Of what you want. And even if you don't know people or you don't have a network that is, you know, like the one that you and I have built over time, you can still learn from people they haven't met. Full stop. Especially with YouTube. It's crazy. It's incredible. And then you just reverse engineer it. And so, what you'll do is, if you were to simply do this exercise, like we're just going to stick with the podcast episode, but you could insert anything. How do I start a dry cleaning business? You could Google, I don't know how to use that, but I bet there's a video about it. How do I start a catering business? Do I need a commercial kitchen to do that? Like all these things somebody has figured out. And they have put a video out or they've written a blog post or they've written a book or they're doing a course right now on it. As you're a student, here's your assignment from Mel Robbins. Write down all the actions that you're learning about that people do. Oh, I got to For podcasting, I got to learn how to edit audio. Oh, I got to learn about equipment. Oh, I got to understand all these platforms. Oh, I've got to listen to a ton of podcasts to understand what I like and what I don't like. Oh, I've got to record some. Oh, I've got to Like there's a bazillion things, right? And so, keep that list handy. Because every day you can wake up and look at that list, and there is your road map to what you want to create in your life. And what happens next is there will be something on that list that is the starting line. For real. Like when [ __ ] gets real. And for me, that was turning on a microphone, which I started doing about 6 months ago. What is up, my friend? Tom Bilyeu here, and I have a big question to ask you. How would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of 1 to 10? If your answer is anything less than a 10, I've got something cool for you. And let me tell you right now, discipline, by its very nature, means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful, boring, which is what kills most people, or possibly scary or even painful. Now, here is the thing, achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging, stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring, and it will get boring. Building your levels of personal discipline is not easy, but let me tell you it pays off. In fact, I will tell you, you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline. All right, I've just released a class from Impact Theory University called how to build ironclad discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you. All right, click the link on the screen, register for this class right now, and let's get to work. I will see you inside this workshop from Impact Theory University. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Peace out. How did you deal with being bad if you were bad in the beginning? Oh, I was terrible. Well, cuz I, you know, I yammer on and on and on, and I I I have a very dyslexic ADHD brain, and so I'm all over the freaking place. And it was interesting cuz I just assumed having done six audio projects with Audible, and, you know, these two self-published audio books that, okay, we got a lot to talk about. Well, one of the big takeaways for me in being a student of this is that the podcast is not about me. It's about what my intention is that I want it to have the listener experience. And if you are going to create something that has an intention, it has a very different level of artistry and discipline and purpose to it. And so, I figured out very quickly that, yes, I personally want a podcast to sound like two friends having a conversation. And without a certain level of prep and intention on my part, it was not going to turn out that way. It was going to be Mel meandering all over the place. I mean, even just here, like you and I sit down and we're 20 minutes into a conversation and we're already like you know, we're like, "Time out." And so, I needed to in my student mindset I needed to be honest with myself that there are things that I have as natural talents and skills, just like everybody does. But, I also have major weaknesses that I got to get under control. So, that I don't derail possible success and fulfillment with this project based on my weaknesses. That's the part I want to understand though. So, you have these weaknesses, they're rearing their head, you're having some kind of emotional response. How do you soothe yourself through that? Is it just a belief that, "Hey, I can learn, I'll get to the other side, that the sort of awkwardness is a natural part of the progression?" Or what do you do to keep that emotional demon from consuming you? It's an excellent question and it brings us to number three, right? Because we've talked about get up, we've talked about setting an intention, oh, we've talked about aligned action. And part of aligned action is about your attitude. So, I think I am proud of this unwavering faith and optimism that I have programmed into my noggin over the past several years. That I believe that whatever it is that I'm doing is leading me somewhere else. That every experience, especially like the shitty stuff that you can In a the universe is guiding me somewhere kind of way? No, I just feel like So, so it could be mystical and spiritual. But, for me, it's more of an internal grounded faith. And uh you know, I think you and I talked about this, but I I I I had this kind of uh you know, wake-up call moment where I realized, "Oh my god, you know, you and I are sitting here today, Tom. And if you and I look back at our lives, you can see how everything that happened led you right here. And that even the hardest moments had a deep purpose in shaping who you are, your skills, your expertise, your heart, your soul, your habits, your perspective. And knowing that that's always been true. And do you believe that that's true? That everything that's happened to you has somehow prepared you for what's happening now? I don't believe that it's prepared me. I think that it shapes you for sure. I think most people live by the law of accident though, and I'm terrified to live by the law of accident. What is the law of accident? That things happen, and I just go with them. So, I'm not every Yes, I don't think everything happens for Well, so one of my favorite quotes, "Everything happens for a reason, but sometimes the reason is that you're dumb and unprepared or whatever." And it's like Yeah. dumb decisions and yeah. That I will agree with. But I think that we make meaning and purpose out of things. I don't think they intrinsically have meaning and purpose. Uh-huh. So, I think that life So, I think the second law of thermodynamics is true, that everything leads towards entropy, aka chaos. And the only way to get it back on track is what you're walking us through, which is you inject energy back into the system. And so, this idea of aligned action makes a lot of sense to me. You have to figure out, "Okay, I set my I got out of bed. I set my intention, and now I'm going to do things that align with my intention." Yes. But that's going to be hard. There going to be things that are not going to Of course. So, it's interesting that you have a deep faith that like I guess that you've made sense of everything. No, here here's I let me see if I can explain it this way. Um I know I guess it makes me feel grounded, confident, and assured. That all the [ __ ] that's happened back there, stuff I would not want to repeat. Mhm. But if it brought me to here, I would. That it has shaped me, prepared me, it has had a purpose. Do you think things sometimes shape you for the worst, though? I think things shape you for the worse until you get the lesson or the wake-up call or the frustrated kind of rock-bottom moment. Is Mel Robbins just unusually good at making use of it? I actually think you are. Oh, I think you know, I think that I I hate the fact that I have to hit a [ __ ] wall Yeah. To change direction. though, it's really interesting. So for the the audience, one of the first things you said when you got here was, "I'm actually doing really well right now. I've learned to like reject all the self-hatred and beating myself up and all that." And my reaction was, "That's amazing." But you've made such extraordinarily good use out of all your struggle. You are uniquely able to take that mess of life and turn it into this really simple idea that people can deploy immediately. I literally find it comforting knowing that somehow every experience of my life is going to be connected to something in the future. Because you're good at learning lessons. I have to put that caveat. Yes. And when I believe that the [ __ ] that's going on is going to somehow connect to something in the future it allows me to be more resilient. It allows me to be a little bit more um Is it objective? Yeah, objective when things are going wrong or when I'm in a really low point or when I listen to my first couple like episodes that I record okay Rich Roll, I'm going to do a podcast episode now and I listen I'm like, holy [ __ ] this sucks. And I just took on an advertising part like this really sucks. I got a lot of work to do. I go, yeah. And thank God you had that call with Rich. And thank God you're listening to it cuz you're right, Mel. If you want this to really make a difference in people's eyes. If you want to really do something awesome here, you're going to have to [ __ ] like learn something new. Walk me through that process. So, what are you doing now? The first or what did you do? The first few episodes you're like the first before I came here? So, we have taped about 17 versions of episode one. Not because I'm like trying to be perfect, but because I have a certain standard for what I want to put out there and I literally as we've gotten closer and closer and closer and closer and closer to launch I just knew that what we had put out was not what I was supposed to put out. And that and I and I kept standing though not like in a place like, we're [ __ ] Like we're we're literally launching 4 days from this interview, Tom. 2 hours ago I was in the corner of my hotel room in LA. Mhm. My team had built a a a Remember when we were kids, you make those little forts out of uh uh sofa cushions? Yeah. I am in a fortress of sofa cushions on the floor of the uh hotel room a mile from here. There is a [ __ ] truck outside the window going That sounds about right. And we've got like a deadline to get this to our sound engineer so it can get mixed and everything and I know that this is this all leads somewhere else, so there's no reason to actually get stressed out about it. There's no reason to get nervous about it. And so kind of being able to be in a moment that's high pressure and know that somehow it's going to work out and somehow this lesson is going to connect me to something in the future and somehow this all leads somewhere. It allows me to show up when shit's going sideways in my life and still maintain this centered focused level of confidence. And so uh the show I think the show's [ __ ] incredible, honestly. I'm so proud of what we're doing and the first couple episodes that we did they weren't good enough, honestly. Just weren't good enough. Um I really want to do something awesome. And so then the second show was a complete accident. We were filming something else and my daughter calls. She's blown up my phone and she is in the middle of finding out something. And what she found out is that somebody that she used to like now likes one of her really good friends. And it's not even about the breakup. It's about this emotional tsunami that we all experience in life. And how do you find your center when something like that hits because the other complicating entanglement is they're all in the same music program. And they all make music together. And so I said call me when you get out of class. We stuck the phone to a microphone. As she's riding her bike and I'm like get off your bike. Okay, okay, okay. She sits down and you listen to my 21-year-old daughter and I unpack this entire situation in real time. So instead of talking about the advice, you're actually experiencing it in real time with somebody who's going through it. Which is exactly what I wanted this to be. I I I I am I wanted to have an experience that was more intimate, that was in real time, that would allow me to bring people into the ups and downs and behind the scenes of my life without turning it into a reality show. Because that's how I learn. I learn by not necessarily reading in the book. I learn by falling on my face. I learn by screwing up. I learn by getting frustrated with myself cuz I'm making excuses about the things that I want to do. And none of this behavior actually goes away. I just find that like as you level up, those kind of old coping mechanisms and things that you do to keep yourself where you are, they just level up with you. It's really interesting, the idea that I think this is an idea that you and I see slightly differently. I don't know that it matters though. It's like as long as you have the frame of reference that allows you to get to the other side. Interesting, but for me it's I again just like yours is based on your experience, mine is based on mine. I have found that the lessons do not come automatically, that if I don't pay attention and find the lesson and remind myself, cuz the way that I remind myself is there no matter how badly I fail, that I can learn from this and that if I learn enough, that knowledge will stack and I'll be able to succeed in a way. So my thing is on a long enough timeline I can be anyone at anything. Now, I don't believe that literally, but it's so close to true that I'm like it it will keep moving me forward. But I always have the fear that the things that are happening could very easily make things worse. And it's really interesting that as I get older, I think about this a lot like part of my anxiety has always been around it it has I've grown more anxious as I've become more self-aware. And the reason that I become more anxious as I become more self-aware is I realize that there are real stakes. And I made a series of decisions, for instance, that grew my business and allowed me to sell it for a billion dollars. Had I made the wrong decisions, that wouldn't have happened. Right. And I've been in legal battles. And if you make the wrong decision, it goes one way. If you make the right decision, it goes another. And so, there are moments in life that really are ultra-high stakes. Mhm. And you have to pay attention, and you have to get it right, and a certain level of anxiety is useful. But then there becomes a point where it's too much anxiety, and now that becomes detrimental, and that becomes the very reason that you're making mistakes. So, it's like this really fascinating nuanced thing of recognizing the lesson will not take care of itself. I must get in there, get in the messy middle, figure it out. And I soothe myself by knowing that It's a Jim Carrey quote that I'm paraphrasing. But he said, "These people came to me one night at the whatever the Comedy Store. And they said, 'Hey Jim, there's a big casting agent. They're in the audience. This is your one chance. Do not blow it.'" And he went out and he blew it. And he came back, and everyone's like, "Oh my god, like this was your one shot." And he was like, "Let me tell you this right now. Until you've blown your one shot five times, he's like, you haven't even started yet." And so, I was like, "Wow, that's really powerful to remember that it's going to seem like you've only got this one shot, but really you've got a lot." But those It's really They're real consequences. but here's the thing. There are real consequences, but see, I think you're always playing a high-stakes game. You can't help yourself. It's in your DNA. And you're not somebody that's going to make a stupid decision. I know I am. No, you're not. I'm not going to knowingly make a stupid decision, but I've made so many stupid decisions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. So I'll give you an example. Okay. So NFTs. Yes. A road map was a mistake and a road map led me to 120 hours a week for 8 months. Okay. To the point where people are like there's no way you were working 120 hours. Oh, I can tell you. I can run the math. So it was 120 It was so dumb. I was losing sleep. It was [ __ ] nightmarish and as I got into it I I realized what the mistake was, but I I didn't know enough to avoid the mistake. Now I'm very glad that I took action and I did it and I built it and it's all going to be fine in the end. Right. But it it put me through 8 months of not fun. It was brutal and unenjoyable and taxing on my marriage and so I would not repeat it and if I wasn't able to say that was a [ __ ] mistake, don't do it again, I'm likely to repeat the mistake. Okay, so so Here's the way I would frame that. That it had to be that painful because you were a stubborn [ __ ] and you would have not gotten the lesson but for it being that painful and I only say that because hello, like I often wonder why is this happening to me? Like I during Here's the things I can talk about. During the pandemic between like the talk show and the speaking business coming to a freeze and being responsible for payroll, being the victim of wire fraud, having a bunch of stuff go down with people that betrayed me and stole from me and lied to me and on and on and on. I'm like I can't take one more [ __ ] thing. Yep. But there was a singular lesson. A singular lesson that I was too stubborn, too busy, too whatever that I could then see backwards, oh [ __ ] Life's been trying to teach me that for a while. And what it was trying to teach me is number one, you have to stop being everybody's friends and you've got to start being like you got to start thinking like a [ __ ] CEO. You are not people's mother. You are a CEO now. Technically you are three people's mother. Three. But I was bringing that into business. Two, because I'm not chasing celebrity or not I don't view myself as this person with this like massive list of accomplishments. I just view myself as somebody who's sharing the stuff that I'm learning because I want to help you avoid the painful heartbreak mistakes that I made cuz I didn't know any better. That to me is what drives me. If I can help you accelerate your success or shrink the amount of pain that you feel, I have won the game of life for me personally and I feel deeply fulfilled. But I was not being responsible about the platform that I had built. And I was not being responsible about getting systems and process in place. And the more successful I became, it was interesting. You and I you know, I started to have less and less and less to be able to complain about. And so it like got pointed right back at me. And the biggest wake-up call that I got when everything started to implode over the last 2 years was somebody said to me, "You know, Mel, the more successful you become, the more miserable you are." And this Were they saying that about you specifically or they're just saying in general? About me specifically. It's like I've known you for 8 years and you're just you know, like what you were talking about, Tom. You're stressed out. You work all the time. Whenever we check in, you tend to focus on the things that aren't working. And that tells me that nothing's working. And the reason why everything's breaking is because it's supposed to. And there are major mistakes that you're making about how you're approaching things, who you've surrounded yourself with, the way that you're showing up. And life is breaking things because you're not supposed to continue building on this messy foundation. And when I look backwards, Tom, just like you kind of look backwards, you can probably see, "Oh, I wish I would have made it I would I would have saved all myself that heartache." I didn't know any better. And clearly, I am the kind of person that whether it's because I move so fast or I'm distracted or whatever it may be, I need a sledgehammer to change directions. And I have now committed in this next phase of my life to change a lot of the patterns that weren't making me happy. And so when you and I saw each other today and you asked how I was doing, I mean it. Like I am starting to have a breakthrough in happiness and being content. And I'm realizing, and this makes me very sad to say, I'm not sure I ever really knew what happiness feels like as a baseline. Like I feel like I'm the kind of person I've experienced a lot of joy, I've laughed a lot, I've had some fun, I've got tremendous amount of memories, I'm a good person. But in terms of having a sense of contentment and peace and being able to just be in the moment and enjoy where I am, I have never experienced that as sort of a a way of being. What was the breakthrough? Well, I think it was um probably two years of a lot of things breaking apart. It was the fact that during COVID, especially during quarantine, I couldn't go anywhere. And it made me confront the fact that I was regulating any uncomfortable feeling by being busy. And, you know, there's some interesting things that I've been really unpacking about anxiety. And it relates to this. So, I started to see that the way I had been doing things not sustainable. I also being home, I had this like feeling of deep sadness because all of our kids were home, and I realized, "Oh my god, I missed out on our daughter's high school." And I'm about to miss out on Oakley's high school experience. Because I am so buried in work, and I'm so and I'm chasing the the next speech or the next plane or writing this book that I'm not present in my life. And the other thing that started to happen is because I couldn't reach for the coping mechanism of running to Target or running to meet a friend or running to catch a plane, I was forced to sit with myself. And I started to realize that my experience in my body and in my mind is one where I feel like a race car that is sitting at a stoplight, and the light turns it green. And one foot's on the brake, and the other one's revving the engine. And that there is this experience that I have lived with forever of feeling um just like the engine is revving, and something's wrong. And I know it comes from childhood. I know that it comes from the fact that, you know, I had a mom that had me when she was 19, and she dropped out of college. My parents are still together 54 years later. Wow. And she was a teen mom. She was halfway across the country from, you know, the large family farm, and it must have been horrible. And she was alone and my dad starting medical school and they were financially had nothing and she was an unplanned pregnancy and they got married like that summer after she dropped out of school. And I believe that my mom's like stress at that time is something that I absorbed. And I don't I'm not blaming it on her. I'm I'm like talking about the science here of how zero to five particularly in those years where you're not verbal, you have experiences as a kid where you're not a match with your parents. And by not a match, I mean that what you need as a kid is not a match for the way in which your parent shows up. I am sure I am not a match for all three of my kids all the time. That maybe there's a moment where one of my kids really needs me to be soft and loving and kind and and just hold them and I'm like talking and doing solutions. That means you're not a match. And what happens from zero to five is that because your survival depends on attachment, when there's not that match emotionally for whatever reason, your parents aren't present, they're dealing with their own [ __ ] they never got it themselves or like a lot of times there's just those of us that need a lot of love. And you have a parent that only has so much to give. I there's this famous TD I think it was TD Jakes example where he was talking to Oprah and he said I'm probably going to get this wrong but he said he was explaining to her, "Look, you're just like a 10-gallon person. You need 10 gallons of love. And maybe your mom had this much to give." And so there can be a mismatch because when a parent gives you everything they have to give but it's only a drop in the bucket for what you actually need because you're a unique individual, you feel threatened. You feel unsafe. You feel separate. And so, I've recently learned from Dr. Russell Kennedy, should have him on, it's fascinating, that all anxiety starts from an experience of being separate from your parents as a child. And that when you're separate from your parents, there's an alarm that goes off, and that's what we call anxiety as adults. And so, when you have an experience as an adult, a lot of us, and I for years thought about anxiety as something that was like an alarm bell, something's wrong, go fix it. That's where all the doing comes in. My busyness, Tom, was my attempt to outrun the alarm. My busyness, my overachieving, my drive, it was all like a coping mechanism for something going on in the background all the time. And anytime I would be in a situation where I felt separate, which was often, like I have often had the experience of feeling like I'm on the outside looking in, that alarm is going off, and so I dive into work. A lot of people silence the alarm. My husband did this by smoking weed every day. Makes the alarm feel a little bit more quiet. People do it with drinking. They do it with uh porn, with all kinds of addictions. And so, I developed this addiction to being busy and to constantly being in my head worrying about things. Like, it's its own form of addiction. And so, during the pandemic, when things got really quiet, and I couldn't reach for my normal coping mechanisms, I like just started feeling like I was having a mental breakdown. Wow. And I got very serious about really going inward and figuring out, what is actually going on here? You journaling, you meditating, what is going inward? I'm a marriage therapist. I I tracked down a therapist that works only with women around these sort of attachment issues. I I did EMDR sessions, the eye movement stuff. My husband and I did several MDMA therapy sessions that were guided that were just revolutionary, life-changing, and I started to experience something that I've talked about for years, but I have never been still enough to truly put into practice. And that is that most of us treat mental health issues by going from what I would say the neck up. I wish there was a different word than mental health. I really do because mental health makes you think it's up here. Any issue that you have, Tom, that relates to the way that you think or physiological changes in your body or or like on edge anxiety all that [ __ ] it's all in your body. Your body has stored experience. and mind or just your body? but your body, so let's go neck down. Neck down is where the money is, people. Neck down is where the healing is. Neck down You want to make more money, you want to be confident, you want to be more content and happy, all this stuff? Let's talk about the neck down. We've We spend a ton of time talking about really useful things in the toolkit like meditating, like uh managing your thoughts, interrupting your thoughts, changing the channel, working on mindset. That gets you so far. And yes, those things have a benefit in terms of what happens in your body. Like we know based on all the extraordinary research around meditating what the physiological effect is, what the chemical effect is, the effect on stress. But I am a living example that if you start to attack any mental health issue or any mindset issue from the neck down holy [ __ ] Tom. Talk to me about how you do that. So, how you do it, first of all, is by understanding a simple fact. You feel before you think. And so, because all the experiences in your childhood are stored and remembered in your body, your nervous system, your gut, your heart, like all this stuff, it's all interconnected. I mean, when you and I were in uh in utero, the same embryonic clump that forms the brain, as you know, you talk about it on the show, is connected to the gut. It's the same glob of stuff. I know it's not technical. I'm not a doctor. And when Glob is pretty good. then like when you pull it apart like that stuff that goop that kids play with, and that stringy [ __ ] connects the two, those are the neurotransmitters and the thing called the vagus nerve that literally act like a superhighway from your gut to your brain. That your nervous system isn't, you know, we think of the nervous system, and I don't know about you, but I think about like, you know, the wires in your body and all that stuff. It's more than that. It's your gut, it's your heart, it's how everything's all connected. It's all of it. Stuff is hopelessly complicated. For people that don't know, the enteric nervous system, so from your esophagus to your anus, actually has as many neurons, literal brain neurons, uh as a cat brain. So, when you think about having a personality, like think about how much a cat does and how specific they can be and how much personality they have and how one is different than another, it's really crazy. And then, if you magnify that 8,000-fold by taking in all the bacteria and fungus and viruses and all that that live in your microbiome, gets crazy. When I heard that 70% of your serotonin is stored in the gut, that's when I was like, "What is happening?" Yeah. Yeah, it's true. A balanced gut is everything. And so, I just real And so, when you start to understand, "Wait a minute. Like, there's all these physical sensations that we have that are stored experiences." And those physical sensations send an alert to your brain. And then, your brain starts scanning and trying to interpret the signal that your body is sending it. So, I'll give you a simple example. So, um I walked into a um like a trunk show that a woman was hosting uh in this new community that we live in. And amazing group of women. Invited me to come over to look at this dress line that a woman had just launched. So, supporting a a female entrepreneur, meeting all these other cool women that have moved to this small town. And I walk in and I immediately feel the alarm go off. And it may surprise you because I seem to be a very outgoing person. But the truth is, I was kind of shy as a kid. And I'm not a big group person. I'm a really like one-on-one kind of person. Big parties are not my scene. I was never the big girl gang kind of person. And um I love having lots of friends, but I'm way more comfortable in smaller settings. And so, I feel this alarm go off. And I've just, you know, been immersed for the last year and a half in my own healing. Mhm. And so, I go, "Oh, interesting. I wonder why this is going off." And I walk in and I'm greeted by, you know, a wonderful group of probably nine women. And right after I hug everybody and I start to look around, I realize they all start talking again and they all have kids the same age. They've known each other for a couple years. And I have that immediate feeling of being separate. And I go, "Oh, that's that's what this is." That's exactly what Dr. Kenny was talking about. This is a an experience that is super subtle where this alarm goes off. Now, the old Mel would have been like, "Oh my god, I shouldn't have moved to this town. I'm never going to make friends with people. This is a horrible decision." Aiming it right back at me. Immediately interpreting the alarm like something's wrong. Because from an evolutionary standpoint when back in the day when there were saber-tooth tigers, the alarm going off inside your body meant there was something wrong. So, now that I know that this is just a stored experience in moments where the little Mel felt alone, I now know that the fastest way to flip the switch is to like literally just put my hand right here and be like, "You're okay." Like just give myself the reassurance that I didn't get in whatever moment my my body's remembering from childhood. And literally the alarm disappears. And so when you start to become very self-aware about your body, and when you go on edge, or when you freeze, or when you feel that withdrawal, all you have to do is give yourself a little reassurance and love in that moment, cuz that's all that it is. Anxiety is from the little you. And it is waving a flag to say, "Hey, turn inward and give me a hug, or do whatever." He's got this great exercise where you can take a towel and just go like this, and it's almost like giving yourself a hug. And I will tell you, Tom, absolute game-changer. Because instead of doing what I have done for 52 years, which is I feel something's wrong and I go upstairs, and then I try to manage the psycho thoughts that are going on, I just go right into my body and cut it off at the pass. And when your mind doesn't get involved and doesn't start interpreting all of the signaling in your body, it passes within what's the research says like 90 seconds, but when you get really good at it, it passes like that. So, things like um uh cold exposure. So, we have um an ice barrel, and we've got this other cold plunge thing that Joel Maron just sent to me as a gift, our buddy. I do that like several times a week. Uh the other thing that I do is I always exercise every day, whether it's taking the dog for a walk. I get outside first thing in the morning. Um I do all kinds of breathing techniques, uh whether it's like I just learned a new one where you take in two nose breaths and then It seems dumb and you look really stupid doing it. Breathing stuff so effective though. is like the exhale's the important part. Because when you breathe in through your nose like that, it shuts off your brain thinking. You cannot do that and think about something. Like try to do a math problem while you're going You can't do it. And then blow out through your teeth closed And the longer the exhale the better because it's on the exhale that you are learning and signaling to your body that you're in control in this moment. And so all these somatic techniques, another really game-changing one is cuz I now think around the paradigm of neck up. Right? Neck up is managing things through your mindset. And the five-second rule is a very neck up approach. It's a way to force your brain to move from the subconscious to the conscious. But it's neck up. And yes, it works. And yes, it helps interrupt thoughts. And yes, it helps to redirect behavior. But in many ways, it's sort of like a push. And what I've found is the more that I go from the neck down as an approach, I think it's called somatic therapy. My Chris is actually getting a master's in transformational psychology right now. Transformational psychology stuff? think that's what it's called. Is this about somatic? It's about somatic sensations and also the integrative therapy with plant-based medicine. He is studying to be a death doula. Like Chris is a death doula. What is that? It is somebody that so if hospice is somebody that comes in and is with you as you're dying and helps the family and basically will do whatever the family needs or what the person who's, you know, terminally ill needs, a death doula is a trained counselor that sits with you so that you have spiritual guidance sessions about completing your life and the meaning of your life. Yeah, that's what my husband is drawn to do. Um, he's just felt a call to do it. Is there any unresolved thing there for him? Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. But, you know, we had his dad alive for 18 months as he was dying from esophageal cancer and Chris sat with him all the time and filled out all of our paperwork. Thank god, cuz I don't. I mean, you don't either. He is a deep guy and he is deeply interested in helping people find meaning and alleviating suffering. And, you know, at some point we're all going to die. And, I think he was very moved by that book Tuesdays with Morrie. And just the experience of being with people at the end of their life. I mean, there's so much wisdom from people at the end of their lives because you're reflecting on everything. And there's a lot to learn and I think there's also a lot of comfort that somebody that's trained to do so can provide to somebody that is reckoning with something that we're all going to have to face in our lives. And so, I think it just creates deeper meaning for him to be studying these things and helping people and I mean, all of his work is about men's retreats and helping men that have been chasing success to to truly figure out how to be happy. How to be themselves. How to rewrite the book, so to speak. Wow. All right, this is all very interesting. we're like a deep couple. This is why nobody invites us over for dinner. They're like, we're not bringing those two over. It's going to be therapy. I love this to death. In fact, let's get into some of this therapy. So, what was the most transformational piece of therapy that you guys did as a couple. Um I think well, the most transformational for sure was MDMA guided therapy. Um but it was also inside a container where we've been we we see a marriage counselor and that's even like a dumb word for it. We literally talk to a therapist once a week. It is so amazing. Because when you've been married we've been married for 26 years aren't you guys like 21 years? 20 years? When you've been married that long um and you've known each other for that long you are like it's very easy. You know, people use the word roommates but our therapist highlighted something that was invisible to both of us which is that Chris and I have become masterful at doing things together. We can build a house. We can organize three kids on a calendar. We can coordinate, you know, who's going to the vet with the dog. We can do all that stuff and we can still go out on a date night and we can still like, you know, have a great time together and go hiking in the woods. But there is a level to which emotionally and spiritually we were sequestered from one another. Explain the difference between emotional and spiritual. So emotional is in my book the things that you're feeling. Mhm. And spiritual is a deeper landscape about the meaning in your life and your sense of purpose. And so you guys just weren't sharing those things? I think we had gotten so busy and had fallen just into kind of the logistics of three kids and a dog and building a house and businesses and just how busy life is for all of us that we were not creating these deep moments of coming back together and really unpacking what we're thinking about. And we also had a very unhealthy dynamic. And the dynamic was this. Um because my coping mechanism with the alarm is to go go go go go go go go go go go go. I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it. I got it. I got it. Like over-functioning anxiety. And because And you know, I also, you know, just being kind to myself, my success, Tom, came at a time where, you know, Chris and I were struggling financially. Mhm. And so, so much of my success was fueled by crisis. Sure. And so, when I first started getting booked for speeches, [ __ ] we had liens on the house. We were major like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Chris had left the restaurant business. He was on a 2-year like trying to just deal with depression. He had stopped drinking. And he was just lost. He felt like a complete failure. So, I am out there on the road like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." And I had this one focus, which is like, "Pay off the liens. Get the savings back. Start paying our bills." And that all happened, but I never clicked out of that mode. Meanwhile, I'm married clearly to a man who is so deeply spiritual. He's a certified yoga instructor. He's done the 500-hour Buddhist meditation training with Thich Nhat Hanh monastery. He leads, you know, and started this men's retreat soldier. He wants to be a death doula. I was going to say that's like the capstone there. Yeah. And And he's married to a freaking hurricane of emotion, right? And so, he's my rock. I'm the tornado. He is the foundation of our family. I am the entertainment like that rolls in. And it works. But it doesn't work. Because what was happening is we were getting further and further and further away from one another. As I got busier and busier and busier, Chris's coping mechanism for the alarm that goes off is to withdraw. And so Chris was withdrawing into smoking weed, into his work, into being a stay-at-home dad, and we were not seeing each other. We were not connecting with each other. And so I started Chris started to tell himself a story that she doesn't need me. And she's too busy, and I you know, why would I buy her a Christmas present? Because she's probably already bought them anyway. And the things that I do, like, you know, she redoes them anyway. And now meanwhile, I'm got the story where I'm like, "Why isn't he buying me a birthday present? Like, why didn't he plan a party? Oh, I'll just do it." And so our coping mechanisms for those alarms of feeling separate, which we're both feeling for one another, are literally the exact opposite of what we both need from one another. And so it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And yet, on the surface, we're functioning, and life looks good, and we're laughing, and we're enjoying each other, but the big wake-up call for me, and you know, I now realize I'm really answering the question that you asked me, which is what was the thing that led you on this path of really trying to figure out how to be happy, is I realized during the pandemic how profoundly lonely I've been. I have been profoundly lonely in my business. I have been profoundly lonely in my marriage. Not that Chris isn't there, but just missing this like amazing connection that Chris and I have had for so many years. I have been lonely because I have been working so hard that I have not been around, and friendships have basically, you know, just kind of It's not that they're not there, it's that I just don't have that in my life because of the decisions that I had made about work and how much I was traveling. It all makes sense, but I just realized, holy like I'm [ __ ] isolated. I'm lonely. I love the work that I do, but in terms of it's it's what I've got. And I don't want to be that person. I don't want to wake up and, you know, Oakley's graduated from college and I missed it. I don't want to like all of a sudden feel like, you know, Chris is now like off doing these things and I'm not a part of that. Like everything that I've been building was meant to fix our financial problems and I realized like I missed out on why I was doing it in the first place. And it's a very easy thing for we overachievers and our high anxiety functioning kind of people and people with anxiety can get into. And so COVID was such a gift even though it was very, very painful because it broke the paradigm at its core. And I realized that I if I was going to fix this, I had to address this feeling of being deeply lonely. And that meant there was a shitload of stuff that I needed to change about my business, about my habits, about the rhythm of the week. And so um I made a commitment that I wanted to identify every aspect of my life where I felt friction. Like any grumbling. Any um kind of like that negative energy when you think about this aspect of your life. And the interesting thing about when you set an intention or you decide that you're going to change your life is that if you watch this episode with Tom and I and you're like, okay, I'm going to be happier. Guess what? Life does not hand you happiness. It brings to the surface all the [ __ ] that's not making you Because as long as that [ __ ] is there, there's no room for happiness. So when I said I want to remove everything that creates this sort of uh real friction inside me, of course what rises to the surface is not common peace, it's everything that's broken. And so one by one, and the most important thing to me is my marriage. Because the whole point of being a parent is to raise your kids so they leave and they go build their own lives. And you hope that they find somebody that you love like you love your partner. And so the number one priority was getting back energetically, spiritually, emotionally connected with Chris. And it was a painful process because when Chris's coping mechanism for stress and anxiety and, you know, feelings of not being worthy were going up, his coping mechanism and mechanism is to withdraw. And so having a third party that would facilitate conversations gave Chris this platform to be able to speak. And it gave me this platform to just be able to listen and to start to work on this muscle that I had honed over time of fixing everything. And what Chris really just was missing for me is just being together and being heard. And I had jumped so into a mode of doing and fixing that what Chris needed most, again we're back to this mismatch thing. I was becoming a mismatch. It's not like we were on the verge of divorce or anything, but just if you feel lonely or disconnected in your relationship, go to where there's a mismatch. What is it that you need that you're not getting, but you're afraid to ask for? How did MDMA help with all this? I I really think I wish the world could do this. So, we found out through a friend who had uh had this experience with two therapists that are involved in all of the MAPS protocol. Mhm. And um they and there's this big community in this area of people that are doing the integrative therapy that happens like after an experience where you go in a therapeutic setting and you do MDMA or you do psilocybin or psilocin, I always say it wrong, Psilocybin. psilocybin or ketamine or any one of these incredibly encouraging and awesome new modalities that are out there. And so there's the thing about it is is that everybody focuses on the actual like hallucinogenic experience, but the real magic is in the integration therapy that you do six for six to eight weeks or a year or whatever to actually take that experience and apply it into your life. Mhm. So, with MDMA, which I think the street name is ecstasy or ex- ecstasy or molly, um you go into uh this you go in a room and for us it was like imagine a barn that's like a nice yoga studio with a wood-burning stove and the therapist couple that helped us do this and facilitated literally looked like you would buy the most amazing photos from a farmers market from them. Like just you just want to hug them, amazing married couple. And this modality had changed their marriage after decades. And so, we go in, you set an intention. You then take uh whatever it is that you take, it's in a pill form, and then you sit and talk. And about 30 minutes in, you start to feel warm. And so, they want you to then quickly get on to your like cots or mattresses or whatever you're on. And the the wife was with me and the husband was with Chris. And you put on this mask. and then you put on these headphones and they have a 6-hour long delicious playlist. And it is the most magical guys are going to be talking for sure. Oh, no, no. It's not an external experience. It's an internal one. This is shocking. It is totally different than taking an external company. room but you're not talking to each other. all. just listening to the music? And you're blindfolded. Are you meant to think about your partner? no, no, no. So so wait till you hear this. Okay, so Did they give you instructions before the headphones go on? Well, all they said is like if you need anything just reach over and one of us is sitting there. Uh-huh. And if there's something that you want to remember uh say so and we'll write it down. If you have to go to the bathroom, like, you know, we'll help you get to the bathroom. Right. And listening to the same playlist? Yes. Okay. And they're listening to it too. So it's both in your like crazy like the high-def headphones Right. and they're listening to it in the room. And Tom we've now done this twice uh the full protocol which I'll explain. The first experience was completely different than the second one. Interesting. And what they say is that the um the the medicine uh the music is the guide. Because what happens is this. When your vision is blocked and the music begins if when you drop into the the MDMA and the reason why MDMA is so helpful is because it blocks the amygdala. So in guided therapy with a with an intention, you can revisit things in your life. But they're not guiding you. The music theoretically is guiding you. is? Uh-huh. But if you want to talk, they're there. So, I'll explain what happened to me. So, my intention the first time we did this, cuz this was about 18 months ago, is I'm like, "I'm sick of being miserable. I'm sick of this campaign of misery. I'm so sick and tired of seeing what's wrong and not being able to be like happy. I want to remember the happy moments of my life. I want to look back on my life so far and see the amazing things. I want to be reminded of that, you know, because that cognitive negative bias in our brain is a [ __ ] [ __ ] Like, the fact that they it makes you think of all the things that went wrong and it amplifies those things as a way to protect you versus magnifying the beauty in your life. So, that's what I wanted. The headphones go on. I feel this big wave come up my body. I take a deep breath and all of a sudden I have this sensation, Tom, where I am literally floating. It's almost like, you know, that that that that roller coaster Space Mountain? Yeah. So, it's like you're on Space Mountain going slow. And I'm in the air and I'm flying and all of a sudden I realize, "Oh my god, there's Bear Lake. There's the lake I grew up on." And I swoo I I like swoop down. And there I am with Jody Brickin, my childhood best friend. And we're ice skating. Is this vivid like hallucination kind of thing or just a memory? just No, I was there. Like, it's not even like a projection. It's like you're in the movie. Hm. And I was in the thing like it was just this relived experience. And so, what it's doing is it's unlocking your subconscious and allowing you, because it suppresses the the amygdala, to experience things without a fear response. Okay, so we're with Jody Brickin. Yeah, so that lasts and then the music changes. Like, you have no Did we learn a lesson with Jody? just like there. I'm just like and I'm like, "Holy shit." And then the music changes. And I see these like little feet, like a like a baby. Mhm. And I look up at the sky and and I'm looking from the perspective clearly of the the uh stroller. And I look up at the sky and it's this bright blue impact blue theory blue. And there are these big clouds. They're kites everywhere. Everywhere, Tom. And then I look ahead and it's my mom and my dad. And she was so [ __ ] young. Like I I I I saw her in that moment and I saw something that I'd never like allowed myself to consider. Which is holy [ __ ] they were kids. And here they are in the middle of Kansas and their families are a two-day drive away and they got this brand new baby. She was so young. And I had never stopped to think about what it must have been like for her. And I felt this huge wave. And I'm I reach for Tom. I'm like, "I can't handle this. I can't handle this." And she's like, "Yes, you can." She's like, "What are you feeling?" And so she puts her hands on my chest and I start breathing in deep and I just I'm like I she just and I I felt so much love for her. And you know, we've had this intensely loving, intensely like combative relationship. And I think at a deep psychological level, she's said as much. She gave up everything to have me. And so there's a real tension of feeling deeply proud and also feeling like I never got to do that. Right. And so it really shifted something in me. And and then it just like every music, it was a different experience. And like I flew over the house that we live in in Vermont now. I saw my daughter's wedding. I saw this place we it just was like the highlight reel of past, present, and future. And it had this effect, Tom, of feeling like somebody had gone through every nerve in my body like with a little coconut oil and just smoothed it out. Interesting. And when I was driving home And the other thing that's really interesting about this experience is that the second that you take the eye mask off or the thing, you're out of it. Like you're literally like, wait, where did that world go? And you can get up and go to the bathroom. You're like, I got to get back in there cuz this is going to wear off like it it's crazy. So, um when I was driving home from it, I called my parents. I'm like, oh my god, I did this thing. And I said, there was this one woman. I didn't tell them the vision. I just said, you know, I I I was just like, I think I might have had a baby and I was looking up at the sky and there were kites. And they're like, oh, that was Kansas City. You were probably 1 years old. There's a park by where we lived. I don't remember this. I don't have a single photo of it. Mhm. It was something stored here that there was something in the music that connected to an emotional feeling that I felt as a child in that moment and the memory came up. Incredible. So, the second piece that you do in this therapy is that 6 weeks later you take it as a couple. You get on with the Zoom call with the, you know, two therapists. You set your intention. And then you sit together. You can have music, you can not, you can do whatever. And because you've had this shared experience and you've been doing therapy, you now have this incredible experience where no holds barred. It all comes out. Like you Now you're talking. Oh, yeah, now you're talking For hours and hours and hours and hours. are there on Zoom with you. you They just set you up. And then your thing, and then you go for it. And then you report back in. And that ex- two experiences, literally, it was as if somebody reconnected that energetic between the two of us, and it hasn't left. Now, the second time that we did this, cuz the day we moved into our house up in Southern Vermont, um that we just have relocated to from Boston, we had them come back. Cuz we wanted to do a ceremony in the new house. And so, same exact thing. Chris is on this cot over here, I'm over here on this mattress, pillows, blankets, whatever. We set our intention, and I say, I want to Cuz now I'm working on happiness, and I'm working on catching this campaign of misery, which is what I refer to as this framework that I had, where I didn't even realize how much I kept myself company by complaining to myself, mostly about me. Mostly about like the things I was doing wrong. And it was the High Five Habit that had me start to see it and interrupt it. And once I noticed it, it was sort of overwhelming how often the first thing I thought about was negative. Or it was focused on what I wasn't doing. Or it was jumping ahead to 15 things I didn't need to worry about today. But I was so used to it in the background. It's very common. You can adopt these things from parents or not or whatever. So, we take the thing, we put the iPhones on, headphones, we're in our brand new house. I you know, like have this expectation that it's just going to be magical. Nothing [ __ ] happens. And so, I'm laying there. I'm like, where's the [ __ ] visions? Where's the kites? Where's the And I'm starting to get agitated. And I'm starting to feel friction. And I start tapping on the I I don't think you guys gave me enough cuz I'm not seeing anything. She's like, It's working. I'm like, no, no, no, I don't I'd like nothing's happening here. Like I I what's happening? Like I'm not And and I I said, is it working for Chris? He's like, oh, yeah, he's like deep in it. I'm like, well, something's wrong. She's like, The medicine is giving you exactly what you need. And so now I'm like laying there at Tom and I'm like, why is it working for him and it's not working for me? Like I don't know and I I'm in it. I'm like in the matrix of my own [ __ ] Why And then I start going, well, wait a minute. What if you just laid here for 5 hours and listen to music? Why would that be bad? Why do you have to be complaining? Why are you judging everything? And so now I'm in my own head, zero hallucinations, zero memory, zero anything. And so hours go by like this, where I don't [ __ ] shut up and I'm getting more and more and more friction. It's like my whole body is like, why isn't this working? Finally, I say, Tanya, this is going to be over soon. And I'm not going to have like I I don't know how to let go. How to And she kept going, just drop in. Just let it work. Just just let go, Mel. I'm like, I don't know how. She's like, exactly. That's what it's trying to teach you to do. And then I said, but if I don't figure this out, if I don't figure out how to [ __ ] let go, how to just be okay, this whole thing's going to be over. And I'm going to have missed it. And then she said, just like your life. And that was like, holy [ __ ] And so I just stopped and I laid there and I don't know how long it took, but next thing you know, it was like all there. And that was not the real breakthrough. The real breakthrough was literally it happened like for the next 6 weeks. I felt I know it's going to sound really weird, but I the next day I could not get off the couch. In a negative way? In a weird way. I sat on that couch for at least 36 hours. Is this a depletion of serotonin, kind of negative rebound? I felt like I had like wax candle dripping energy off me that there were energetic layers shedding from my being. That the cuz the [ __ ] I'm trying to break apart, Tom, is generational [ __ ] I want the campaign of misery as a default to end with me. I do not want my kids to have it. I do not want to spend the rest of my life focused on what's not working or beating myself up. And I think that you can a thousand percent from the neck down you can change your experience of what life feels like. And though that experience and all the therapy and the ice baths and the slithering out of bed, which we haven't talked about, which is a whole 'nother thing, I think all of this stuff of getting out of my head and into here, it has caused this seismic earthquake inside me and it's allowed me to break apart [ __ ] that I didn't even know I was carrying with me from generations and generations and generations of behavior of hard working immigrant, you know, tough and all this stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I want to experience love. I want to be able to be present in my life. I want to feel something other than something's wrong or okay, we're laughing now, but all right, now we're back at the grind tomorrow morning. That there's a way to go through life, I know it. Where you feel more like you're on that raft above the wave. And it this this like shedding from that experience lasted like four or five weeks. It was wild. Absolutely wild and I feel um, you know, is it sus- like is this sustainable? I don't know. I think it's like any other muscle. Catching where my thoughts go. Like even today, when we were filming our podcast earlier today and the shit's going sideways and the truck's backing up. The old me, the I would have literally been up here. I would have sounded different on the podcast cuz I would have gone right up here and started doing the thing I do. And I was able to just It's going to be fine, guys. It's incredible. Yeah, I find the use of drugs to be very intriguing. Now, I haven't done it, but as somebody who has drank alcohol or smoked weed, like I understand how profoundly an exogenous substance can make you perceive the world differently. My whole thing is frame of reference and there's What do you mean by that? In the same way that if I bend glass, I can get you to see yourself in a distorted funhouse mirror way. I can bend glass and turn it into a telescope. I can make it represent what what would call objective reality, but those slight distortions in the way that the glass is handled completely alters your perception. All of us see the world in a certain way. And so, the story that put this on my radar, so I'm working in the inner cities, I'm dealing with people that have been through profound difficulties, and I'm looking at poverty, and I don't really understand the nature of it. So, it feels to me like poverty is about not having money. But I've been broke. I've been unable to pay bills. And I was poor, but I wasn't broke or vice versa, depending on how you define the terms. And I started to realize, oh, this isn't a money problem. This is a belief system problem. But when you think about what beliefs do is they create a way of perceiving the world. And so, the moment that it all clicked for me was I was talking to this guy, and he was really smart. Really smart. And I was like, "Dude, you're so smart. You're probably smarter than me, but you're not doing anything with your life. What the fuck?" And he was like, "Oh, yeah. Well, my mom told me that the world doesn't want people that look like me to succeed." And I was like, "Jesus, man." And I was like, "That's the dumbest frame of reference I've ever heard in my life. And the reason is, even if it's true, it makes you not take any action. And the only thing that will guarantee your failure is not taking action." And so, I was like, "I know that your mom had the best of intentions when she said that. She wanted to save you from heartache. She wanted to prepare you for difficulties. But the reality is, it made you not try." And I was like, "The reality is you can get so good that people can't stop you from being successful." And as I said that, I realized, "Ah, this is frame of reference. My frame of reference is that yes, I'm not as smart as I would like to be, but I can learn and I can get better. And if I get good enough at something, people can't stop me from doing it. Your frame of references I might as well not even try because the world is going to stop me. And if I were to adopt your frame of reference, I would get the same outcome because it's now what I call the only belief that matters. The only belief that matters is that you can get better. And if you believe that you can't get better or that getting better doesn't yield any results, then what would be the point? Why would you try? And since we all end up bumping up against reality, which is a skills have utility. And so if you lack the utility, then you won't be able to do the things you want to do. And if you have the utility, people can't stop you whether they want to or not. We're all going to bump up against that reality. And any frame of reference that stops you from pursuing improvement, skill acquisition is doomed to fail from the beginning. And so then I became obsessed with whoa, this is actually a game of frame of reference. How do I give somebody the frame of reference that says, no matter how the deck is stacked against you, you have to learn to play better? And that I mean that is impact theory. It's literally why it's called impact theory. This is my theory on how to impact you. So Well, and that's especially important not only when your mother says it, but if you uh are a person that society's organized and sending messaging and discriminating against you, that message just gets reinforced by your lived experience. And so it means reinforced by what how you interpret it. Well, that's your brain. If your brain from a very young age is told the message that people that look like you like don't succeed, so don't bother. Whether it's told from your parents, or you get that from your school, or you get that from the media, or you get that from some [ __ ] that says it to you your brain and the RAS, of course lets it in and then looks for matching theories. It starts spotting it. And so, it's both true that bias and discrimination exists and your mind organizes itself to see it everywhere as well. And so, you have to fight, I think I think it's really hard to fight against these things that are out in the world that are like for me, I was not dealing with it from society. I had built enough of a of a cage in my own mind that's what I was breaking through. What I'm trying to say is I think shows like Impact Theory are essential. Because if you start to believe that [ __ ] whatever that [ __ ] is that's not true because everybody is capable of change, period. You and I have seen too much evidence of it that you could try to argue to Tom and to Mel Robbins that this person is beyond change, it is complete [ __ ] I think everybody is capable of change unless you have some sort of incredible diet psychosis or diagnosed something or another that makes it neurologically incapable. Everybody's capable of change. And so, the importance of what you're doing cannot be understated because our brains are organized to spot evidence that matches our belief system. That's the way the RAS works. And until you start to interrupt the story that you're telling yourself, you're going to continue to feel stuck. You're going to continue to see those thoughts. And you're the kind of content that you're putting out is hugely important because the other thing that interrupts the RAS is representation. If you see somebody that looks like you or you see somebody like me that was facing bankruptcy 14 years ago and have liens on my house and you see somebody else that faced the [ __ ] that you feel overcome by, it's proof that you can do it, too. And so, thank God you're doing this. Yeah, it's interesting. Getting people to realize that whatever your frame of reference is it's been a series of choices that you've made about what to believe and the problem is most people think that what they believe they have simply realized objective reality. And so getting people to understand that it's not objective reality that it is a distortion it's a funhouse mirror that we all construct and it starts when we're young so it's like who's responsible for constructing it I'm not even worried about that. All I care about is you can reshape the glass at any time and getting people to really engage with whatever your frame of reference is there is a frame of reference that will move you towards your goals and there's a frame of reference that will move you away from your goals. That's the aligned action thing. Exactly and the catch is that aligned action follows from the intention which follows from the you didn't say wake up but I'll say wake up in my own language of recognizing that all the things you believe are it's a construct. Now it's a construct that's based on things that are real you bump into something it really does hurt and so that that stimulus is real but the response is chosen and so the story that you tell yourself and Well hold on a second here's where I would push back. So where I would push back is this. I think once you become an adult and you're outside of the family home or the the church of origin or whatever the hell it is that you now once you get away from that container you have a choice and away from that container may be that you've logged on to YouTube and you found videos that make you start to think different and to question what has been programmed in. I believe that most of us do not have a choice when we're little. That we are I didn't say when you're little. Okay, well, I just wanted to clarify that because because I feel that most of the programming that most of us have was absorbed five and under. And that most of the [ __ ] that we react to is some sort of response to a past experience. And that it's not until you have a wake-up call from somebody like Tom Bilyeu or you see somebody that has been in your circumstance uh that has overcome it or somebody says something that challenges what's been programmed up here, that's the wake-up call. And that's when you realize, oh wait a minute. All of this [ __ ] that I just naturally believe like for example, I didn't have I didn't like, you know, I didn't choose to speak English. That's what was spoken in my house, so I absorbed it. If you grew up with a hypercritical parent or a narcissistic meaning parent, you probably absorb certain things from them that you don't want now that you're an adult, right? I wouldn't even say probably, that's a guarantee. Yes. And so, I just wanted to be very clear because one of the things that prevents people from changing their lives is when you said the thing about what's missing, I was going to say hope. Because without hope that things could change or that this new action or thought matters, you won't do it. And so, if you have this moment where you immediately get this wake-up call that maybe I don't have to be miserable. Maybe I don't have to criticize myself. Maybe I don't have to live with anxiety for the rest of my life. Maybe I could be the first one to go to college. Maybe I could like live as an openly gay or trans person even if my family rejects me. Like there's that wake-up call moment that is critical, but now what you're up against is completely learning how to reprogram all that default [ __ ] that somebody else put there. And that's the work that you're up to. That's the work that I'm doing for myself. And I did it at a certain level uh up until the last 2 years. Like, I've been chipping away at this [ __ ] at all different kinds of levels. And I think the more self-aware you become and the more successful that you become in achieving goals or taking away a lot of the stressors that, you know, are no joke, like paying your bills, the deeper the opportunity to attack the deeper [ __ ] which is what I've been working on. Yeah, when you go on that journey, it is profoundly transformational. It's incredible. Where can people follow you, Mel? Where can they see the podcast or hear the podcast? Uh so, just at Mel Robbins. That's it. melrobbins.com. The podcast is everywhere. Um and uh I just I I'm so excited, Tom. Um the support is just overwhelming. The YouTube version of the podcast is uncut. It's behind the scenes. We're going to put up all shitty, awful first episodes that we filmed anyways, cuz why the hell not? And um the audio experience is slightly different. But, I'm really excited. I I I I sit here and I go, "Wow, I can't wait to have you on my show. Whenever you are. And I also uh can't even imagine how different both of our lives are going to look and feel in 5 years. It's incredible. Yeah, cuz that's when I first met you, 5 years ago. It's insane. I love it. Thanks for being my friend. Thanks for being mine. And thanks for coming back on. And everybody at home, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you want more high-performance content, be sure to check out this episode with Brendon Burchard. You know, if the task fails, you shouldn't take that as as a defining moment in which you say I am a failure. Right? So, that's the risk, and that's what, you know, psychologists tell us to be wary of.