3 Questions to Ask Yourself to Figure Out What You Really Want

Hey, it's your friend, Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. [MUSIC] If right now you're unsure about what you should do next, or you feel stuck, or maybe you feel a little lost, or you feel like things are never going to change, well, I've got good news for you. First of all, it's just not true. Things can change. And even better, there are three questions that you need to ask yourself right now, today, with your friend, Mel Robbins. And what I love about these three questions is that they were created by two legendary professors at Stanford University. You're going to love this, because when you ask yourself these three questions, the questions show you something simple. They show you how to change your mindset. They help you see new possibilities. I'm so excited about this, because by the time you and I are done talking today, or you're done watching this, a whole new future is going to appear for you. You're going to see options where right now you might not see any options, because you feel so stuck. And you don't have to take my word for it, because these questions have been developed over time. They are part of a New York Times bestselling book. They are part of a process called the Odyssey Plan, and that's what you and I are going to do today. So if you want a better life, if you want to call in more hope, more energy, more passion, more possibility, this is exactly how you do it. Hey, it's your friend, Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so excited you're here. It's always such an honor to be together and to spend this time with you. And if you're a new listener or you're here because someone shared this with you, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. And boy, oh boy, have you picked a great episode to listen to or watch today, because today you and I are going to dig into three questions that you need to ask yourself, and then watch your life change. I'm serious. I'm serious. That's what's going to happen. And I'm going to be asking myself these same three questions alongside with you. You're going to be leveraging the power of your mind and leveraging science to help you start moving forward. And I want to give you a little background on why it is that I wanted to talk to you about this today. You know, I was hanging out with some friends of ours that we've known for almost 30 years, and I'm 56. They're the same age. And my buddy was telling me he's worked in tech. He's had a successful run in real estate. And after all that he's accomplished, he's realized something enormous. He has unfinished business with himself. Just hear that sentence again. He said, Mel, I just feel like I have unfinished business with myself. See, he loves music. He's always loved music. He's always played music. And now at the age of 56, he wants to make music the center of his life. Now, this is somebody who's my age. And doesn't it make you wonder, how do you have that kind of epiphany? You know, is it like a Tuesday morning or a Thursday morning that you wake up? You're like, you know what? I've got unfinished business with myself. I need to make some changes. Is it possible to manufacture a breakthrough like that for yourself? I mean, if he's all of a sudden thinking in his mid-50s, well, I got unfinished business. I've got a chapter of my life that I need to live. Just imagine. Imagine if you and I could have that same epiphany today. In fact, just consider that. What unfinished business do you have in your life right now? And I don't care how old or young you are. You might be in your 20s and you're like, I got some unfinished business with myself. There are things I want to do in this lifetime and I really need to like wake up and get more serious about it. Or maybe you're in your 30s or 40s and you've been cruising in your career taking care of your kids and now all of a sudden you're stopping to think, wait a minute. I think I have some unfinished business with myself. There are things I want to do. Huh. It's kind of cool to stop and think about, isn't it? Of course it is. And like me and my friend, you probably have a million excuses for why you haven't made the pivot, why you haven't gone after this thing. I mean, you're capable of doing it, right? It's just your mindset that's holding you back. That's what I'm going to show you today. It's your mindset that's holding you back from having this life-changing epiphany. And so what we're going to do today is you and I are going to dig into this research at Stanford University. It's called the Odyssey Plan. This is a proven method that shakes up your thinking, that expands your mindset, that removes obstacles, that proves to you that you are so much more capable than you think. And I can say that with the level of confidence that I have because Stanford University professors, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, they have taught the mega popular Designing Your Life Course at Stanford University for 15 years. I mean, even if you and I were at Stanford, we probably wouldn't be able to get into the course. That's how popular it is. And when you're done listening to this episode, as we unpack some of the key findings from the Designing Your Life Course at Stanford, you're going to understand why this course and this process called the Odyssey Plan is so popular. And by the way, the professors have also written a book called Designing Your Life. But these three questions and this Odyssey Plan that we're going to go through, it's going to show you what's really possible in your life. And I think we all need that reminder right now. So let's get into it. Question number one from the Odyssey Plan at Stanford University. This question is going to give you a glimpse into your future. How will your life look if you stay on your current path? I'm going to say it again. How will your life look if you stay on your current path? In other words, if absolutely nothing changes about your life, if you stay in your current job, you stay in your current house or apartment, you stay in your current major, your current friend group, your current routine through the day, you stay in your current relationship as it is. If nothing changes, where does this lead you in five years? And really stop and consider something. Do you like where this is leading you? You know, these professors at Stanford, they kind of know what they're doing. Because if you really consider that question, how will life look if you stay on the current path? They're not inviting you to visualize your dream life in 10 years. Oh, no, that's what Mel Robbins does, right? I'm constantly asking us to look at the positive and visualize because visualization is a powerful thing. And it's really fun and empowering to visualize a better future. But that's not what this question is asking you to do. This question is asking you not to visualize the future that you dream of. The question is asking you to be brutally honest with yourself and visualize what happens if you don't change anything. If everything stays the same, you stay on the current path you're on. And look, there are things about your life right now that probably are great, right? But there are things about your life that you got unfinished business. You got things that you're sitting around just waiting to have happen, but you're on the same old, same old, expecting something different to come along. So there's something sneaky about this question. It's kind of asking you, do you want things to get worse before they get better? If you stay on the current path that you're on, you're lucky if it just stays the same. Because if the path isn't fulfilling, if the path feels off, the likelihood is it's actually going to get worse because you're going to feel that grinding sense that there's unfinished business, that there's something that you want to feel or do or become or focus on and you're not doing it. Okay? Let's say you're carrying around an extra 40 pounds. That's not fun. That's not fun. That's very hard to do. So let's say you just stay on the current path and you never carve out the time to start going for a walk or you never carve out the time to dust off the dumbbells in your basement and stream a class. What does your life look like if you never change? Or let's just say you keep working at that job and you're scared, you're bracing for the fact that AI is coming or that somebody that knows AI is going to replace you and you just feel miserable and exhausted but you're not doing anything to look for a new job. If you stay in a job that is draining your life force where you're not being treated well, what does this current path look like two to three years from now? Or maybe you're so stressed out right now that you never get sleep and you're grinding your teeth down to nubs and you're waking up with your shoulder hurting and then you're taking all kinds of things in the morning to try to pop yourself up and 15 cups of coffee and it's just this endless loop and you didn't always feel this way. Let me ask the question again. How will your life look in a year or two years or three years if you stay on the path that you're on? And this is very confronting in relationships because if you're in a relationship that isn't fulfilling anymore but you don't want to upset anybody. I was talking to a friend of mine who was dating somebody and they just kind of said, "You know, I just know the spark's not there and I'm not looking for love at first sight but it was a really good person and we've gone on dozens of dates and I just wish it were working but I just know it's not the right relationship for me. It's so hard when the person's a good person but let's let's just play this out because a lot of us slide into things that we don't mean to slide into. The next thing you know you'll look up and it's a year later and you're living together and then it's two years later and now you feel like you got to get engaged because even though it's not quite right here we are you kind of slid into this because it was the current path that you were on. And I'll tell you one of the hardest things in the world is ending a relationship with somebody who's a really good person they're just not your person. That takes a lot of courage to know that you're disappointing somebody but what you don't want to do is you don't want to stay on a path that's slowly disappointing you. There's an area of your life where maybe you've just put your head down and you're soldiering on and you're pretending everything's fine. Maybe you're in nursing school and you hate it and you hate it but oh my gosh you talked about this for years and now you're in it and and you've paid some money for this first semester and you don't want to tell everybody that you went and now you don't want to do it really think about it. And it might feel a little painful. And this is kind of an intense place to start. Thank you very much professors at Stanford. Boy they're just going right for the mirror in front of us that we don't want to look into. But there's a great reason for why this is the first question. And here's what I want you to look at. I want you to look at this as a neutral question not a negative one right. And if you stop for just a second and say wait a minute it's sort of like I'm on a road trip and all of my actions and the job that I have and the relationships that I'm in it's all leading to a particular destination. If I keep going down this road ask myself do I still want to go in that direction? Where is my current life leading me? Am I hanging out with the friends I want to hang out with? Is this the career that I really want? Is this how I want it to feel? And even if it doesn't feel and look maybe you're saying yes. Maybe you're saying actually I'm exactly where I want to be right now. I'm working at that iBank and these next two years are going to blow but I see where it's going or I'm in medical school and I hate medical school but I can't wait to be a doc and so I see where this is going. I'm in the right place and so maybe I just need to take better care of myself. Maybe I got to change my mindset and stop the beat down because I know that this is a bumpy section of the path but where it leads is somewhere great and this is just a bump in the road. It's worth it to keep working on it. So I'm going to continue down the current path because I see where this leads and so really be honest with yourself because most people aren't waking up every day. Jumping for joy about where they are. You know what's more likely the truth? Most of us wake up every day and wish we could change something or we wish we could change a bunch of things but the thought comes in and then we don't do anything. Why? Because we are stuck in the day to day. You are in this day and you forget that this day is leading you somewhere, that you're on this path that is headed in a particular direction and I know that I've been guilty, maybe you've been guilty of this too, of living your life just hoping things are going to happen by accident. You know waiting for someone to knock on the door and say congratulations, you're hired, you're just the person I've been looking for when you haven't even applied for the job. That's what this question is about. It's saying you have to decide. You have to be the one that wakes up and says okay hold on, everything that I'm currently doing is leading somewhere and if I keep just doing what I'm doing and I let the stress of the day and the headlines and everything continue to just wash over me, that unfinished business will always be unfinished. That change that I want to make, it's never going to happen because change happens with the realization that how you're living right now no longer works for you. It's no longer leading you in a direction that you really feel called to go and I'm here to tell you you're right, you're absolutely right. Congratulations because that's the first step to making a positive change is just being honest with yourself and saying it's not that I'm stuck or I'm still. I just know that how I'm doing life right now isn't leading where I want it to go. That's step one, that's what this question reveals. How will life look if I stay on the current path and if you don't like where this is headed, you better turn that car around. You better go in a different direction. This is what this question is all about and if you're listening you're thinking well Mel, I don't know about every other, I really like my life. That's great, that's fantastic but here's the thing, autopilot's not going to work for you either because in order to keep going in the right direction, funny thing, it takes maintenance. I'm going to give you an example. I've been listening to all the experts here on the Mel Robbins podcast and one thing that has really become very clear when you listen to the medical experts and the experts about longevity and mental health, holy cow, protein is so important. The other thing all the experts have been saying, resistance training, resistance training, resistance training, resistance training. The other thing that all the experts are saying, relationships, relationships, relationships, these are the three things. These are three core pillars and so I've made major changes this year but here's the interesting thing. How will my life look if I stay on the current path? I'm getting 100 grams of complete protein, I'm doing my resistance training and every day I reach out to a friend just to check in. How will my life look? It's going to look great because I'm going to be energized. I'm going to have the energy to age well and to really be able to enjoy my life, to lift up a suitcase and put it over the overhead. Hopefully when I'm 90 to dance at my kids and grandkids wedding, I'm going to be connected to my friends. I'm going to feel better. I'm going to be able to fight off disease. I'm leveraging science. How cool this is? Okay, but here's the thing. The path you're on, it's not a one and done. The path you're on, if you love your life, it requires you to keep doing what you're doing. Roll the clock forward. Roll it forward a year. How much are you going to weigh? What's your stress levels look like? What is your relationship? How does the relationship feel? What's your friend group like? What is it that you wake up and do every day if you just keep doing the same old same old ... What does it look like at nights? Has anything changed? Is there unfinished business that you know in your heart that, "Wow, I'm not going to get to that if I don't reorganize things here. I'm not going to get to that. Things are going to get worse before they get better." I got a shot thanks to this question to make it better now. Here's what I want you to take away from this. By just thinking about the path that you're on and how your life feels right now and the way that you're living your life, and then rolling that forward and visualizing the future version of you. You're forcing yourself to realize that things don't have to be the way that they are. Just because it's always been this way doesn't mean it can't be different. That yes, you have the ability. You have the ability to make some different choices. You have the ability to start your morning differently. You have the ability to claw back some of your time to let them theories can help you with that. Let everybody misunderstand what you're doing. Let people be disappointed. Let people be responsible for themselves. Let me really figure out where do I want my path to lead next. Let me focus on some of the unfinished business. Let me remind myself that I deserve to feel good. I deserve to do work that's meaningful. I deserve to find small moments of joy in my life, even if the world seems like it's spinning off its axis. I want to share some research with you that really shows what's happening when you allow yourself to widen up your gaze to the future. That's what this first question is forcing you to do. Not only visualizing it, but also holding space and imagining that something else is possible. Now, this is a study that was led by Julian Voight at the University of Munich and published in Current Psychology. They found that when people formed vivid visions of their future, those mental pictures boosted positive emotion, which helps you set worthwhile goals and increases your commitment. That leads to more progress. I want to say why this is important, because even if the visualizations of the future are negative, those mental pictures can boost the positive emotion of motivating you to change. Here's what I want you to remember. Your life doesn't change by accident. Your life changes on purpose. I think sometimes we're all sitting around waiting for something terrible to happen, or we're not waiting for something terrible to happen, but something terrible happens and then you're forced to change, or things get really bad and you're forced to change. There's a lot of research around this. I wrote about this extensively in the Let Them Theory that we don't even understand our brains because our brains are wired to move toward what feels easy right now. I love this visualization because if it's negative, your brain is experiencing the pain now and hopefully the visualization of where this is all leading wakes you up now and makes you go, "Okay, the change isn't going to be easy, but it's way better than experiencing that." I'd rather move toward what's hard now and make my life easy later, rather than keeping it easy, same old, same old, and boy, does it lead somewhere hard. You know, my good friend James Clear, he's the author of the Seminal Atomic Habits. He puts it perfectly, "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become." So are you happy with who you are becoming? Because the current path that you're on is leading you to the type of person you are going to become. Who you are right now gives you a glimpse into who you will be in the future, and if you don't like where this path is leading, congratulations. You just got the wake-up call that you needed to start making changes now. So that's the first question. It's a moment of honesty, but we got two more questions to go. So we're going to take a quick break so you can hear a word from our extraordinary sponsors. I also want you to share this with people in your life. I mean, how cool if we all do the Odyssey plan? How cool that you do this with your family? This is a great thing to do with your family this weekend, to answer these questions together. And don't go anywhere, because when we return, we've got question number two in the Odyssey plan from Stanford. Welcome back. It's your buddy, Mel Robbins, and today you and I are asking ourselves three questions that were developed by two professors at Stanford University. It's part of a process called the Odyssey plan. It shakes up your mindset, helps you see brand new possibilities for your life, and it motivates you to start changing now. I just absolutely love this. So thank you for being here today. We've already covered question number one, how will your life look if you stay on the current path? Now, here comes question two, and it's a doozy. If the path you're on disappeared tomorrow, what would you do? And this is what I call the rug pull question. This question just pulls the rug right out from underneath you, right? And it does sound scary. I don't want to visualize what happens when all of a sudden my kids move out and I'm an empty nester. I don't want to visualize what happens when AI takes my job or somebody who knows AI takes my job and I'm unemployed. I don't want to visualize what happens if this job disappears or this volunteer thing that I'm doing that just breathes life into me ends or this book club ends. I don't want to visualize if this relationship is over. What would I do? Why are you asking me this? I don't want to be scared right now. Okay, so here's why you and I need to stick with this question because despite the fact that it's confronting, if the path that you're on disappeared tomorrow, what would you do? The question isn't meant to keep you stuck or to make you freeze. It's actually meant to free you. Okay, what it's getting you to think about now is what's the plan B here? See, plan B is what most people think about when something terrifying happens. Plan B is what most people think about after they lose the job, after the thing happens, after the tragedy strikes, after the relationship's over. The job's gone, the relationship dissolves, the plan blows up. Now what? Well, when it happens in real time, I'll tell you what now what, you go into a trauma response and you freeze and then you're in grief and then you're in a spiral of self-doubt and then you are in fear and then you start to feel like a loser and then you feel like your life is never going to change and then you start to shut down the thought of what might be possible altogether. And what this question does so brilliantly, if the path that you're on disappeared tomorrow, what would you do? What would you do? You know what this question does? It pushes you out of your comfort zone and it pushes you past that moment because if you can consider what would plan B be when I'm actually still in plan A, you can leverage the full power of your brain to start problem solving and to think about things in a very different way. What if it's not the end of your world? What if it's just, okay, what would happen next? What's the very first step that you'd take? You know, I know someone who lost her corporate marketing job recently. It was, you know, kind of an AI downsizing. It's happening to tons of people. It may be happening in your industry right now. Totally blindsided. Totally blindsided. You know what she did? Well, she just started freelancing part time, helping small businesses, you know, mom and pop shops, local businesses with their social media. And now she's running her own consulting business. Someone on my team knows a dancer who had a career ending injury. Absolutely devastating. Can you imagine? You found your actual life's purpose. You are a dancer. You're part of a company. This is your dream. This happens to athletes too. Oh my God, you made the team. Holy cow. And then all of a sudden you have a career ending injury. Devastating. But what did she do? Well, she pivoted into teaching dance classes for kids at community centers. She's still connected to her passion just in a new way. And it goes to show you that plan B is already there. But we're waiting for plan A to blow up before you even entertain it. And here's the other thing that I also love about this. What I love about this is we can get so stuck where we are that we are blind to all the other options that are right there in front of you. Now, it doesn't mean you have to quit your job. I don't want you to listen to this as an either/or. I want you to listen to this as a way to expand your thinking and create ads. So what would I do? You know what I would do? Well, first of all, if I had to pay my bills, I could teach other people how to start a podcast. That's one thing that I could do if I really had to pay my bills. Another thing that I could do is I could go work for somebody else that is hosting a podcast. Another thing that I could do is, you know, I've always wanted to have a flower farm. It's true. There's a person near where I live that has a flower farm that's really trying to figure out how to expand. I could look into being a partner in that. But another thing that I think that I would do if this dissolved, this is going to be one of those unfinished business things. I just have this desire to write a fantasy trilogy. Now, do you see how I'm kind of smiling like it's kind of cringy to even tell you that? But I've always, like, I'm one of these people that I love Corta Thorn and Roses, dramatic audio. I loved the fourth-wing series. I loved Harry Potter. I love Game of Thrones. I love the Hobbit series. I love these world-building things. I love Avatar. And I just think it'd be really cool to try to do that. And here's what's fascinating about this tricky little question. At the past that you're on disappeared tomorrow, what would you do? What would you do? Who in the world is inspiring you right now? What unfinished business do you have? And I'm going to tell you something because I think you need to hear this right now. You don't have to do this. You don't have to pay your bills with it. This question isn't meant to get you to quit your job or to change your major. This question is meant to break apart your very black and white thinking. This question is meant to widen your days and help you lift up your head and recognize there's a lot more to your life than you think you do for work or school right now. There's a lot more to your life than just taking care of your kids and your parents. And if the path that you're on disappeared tomorrow, what would you do? That is a question that is inviting the deeper parts of you to dream again, right? To dream. And it's so easy to cling to what you know and to think it's always going to be that way, even when it doesn't feel that great because it seems safer than imagining other things that you could be doing. But that's what this question asks of you. If the path that you're on disappeared tomorrow, what would you do? And as professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans at Stanford put it, I love this quote, "When you really force your imagination to believe that you have to make a living or you have to fill your time doing something other than what you're already doing, you will come up with something. You will." And here's the other thing I like about this question. It also gets you to look at the thing you've been gripping tightly to even if deep down you don't like it because you're probably telling yourself you have no other options. You've got to pay your mortgage, you've got to pay your apartment rent, you've got this, you've got that, you've got the other thing. But what's really interesting about when things disappear, it leaves you no choice. And as your friend, I'm going to always remind you, you're capable of figuring things out. A lot of us don't realize that until we're forced to. We're forced to figure it out because we got laid off. We're forced to figure it out because we didn't get the dream job. We're forced to figure it out because we, you know, majored in communications and now you're graduating into the world's worst job market in recent history. I'm just going to say it. It's true. It's true. And now you're starting to get discouraged. So the path that you are on did disappear because you're not landing the job. So, okay, what are you going to do now? That's why this question matters because it really gets you to start to imagine and brainstorm and tap into other options before you get fired, before the friendship fades, before the rug gets pulled out from under you. And so why not run that drill right now? That's what the question is begging of you. This is what the Odyssey plan is because if you think about any major twist and turn, isn't it funny that I said, I'd really try to figure out how to write a fantasy novel because the Odyssey plan is about navigating the twists and turns in life. And any great Odyssey, just think about the Greek myth of the Odyssey. There are so many twists and turns. And oftentimes, the hero doesn't see it coming, but you're the hero of your own life. So ask yourself, if you didn't do what you currently do for a living, if you didn't fill your time doing what you currently do, maybe you're filling your time caring for your aging parents, maybe you're filling your time taking care of your littles at home. That's a wonderful thing to do with your life. But give yourself permission. If this disappeared, the kids are off at school, your parents are taken care of. What else would you want to do with your time? If you didn't do what you currently do for a living, could you freelance? Could you make a business? Could you take the time to learn a new skill? Maybe you could learn how to build something in AI or tech or maybe it's something creative. Could you learn how to make money online? Could you pivot into something completely different? Like, could you finally do that training to be an EMT or a volunteer firefighter or working in a new field? Could you get a master's? My husband right now is getting a master's in spiritual psychology by taking one class at a time. It's going to take him four years. He's almost done with it. Why? Well, because he started to imagine. If things disappeared, you know, what is it that I might want to do with my life? And he's like spiritual psychology. I think I'd like to do that. If I, you know, stopped leading men's retreats, that'd be a really cool thing to do. Would you want to pick up extra cash being a bouncer at a bar in the weekends? Because you used to bartend when you were younger and you kind of miss the community that works in a restaurant. Look, I used to work in restaurants. I used to be a bartender. It's like a second family. Would you go to law school? Would you go join the Navy? I mean, that's the point of this question. It's getting you to understand that there's unfinished business for you. There are options. There are things that you'd like to explore. And most of us don't give ourselves permission to do that until life blows up or the job ends. And so this question, thank you professors at Stanford, helps you see that you've always had more options than you think. You're just spending all your time arguing with yourself. Well, I can't quit my job because I got to pay my rent. I can't do this because I got to do the other thing. I can't possibly make a change because my kids and stuff are dependent. Well, what if that's not true? What if there's a version of your life that is waiting for you to see it? I'm just inviting you to imagine the possibilities. And it's hard to do for yourself because if you were to, if I were to ask you the question, hey, as my friend, could you give me advice? If the podcasts were to just blow up, could you think of five things that Mel Robbins could do in terms of a pivot? You'd be like, yeah, boom, boom, boom, boom. If one of your adult kids comes home and they're like all upset because they hate the job path and they studied for this in school and now they realize, oh my gosh, I really hate working in tech, I bet you could give them five things that they could do because you can see the options for other people, but we have blinders on and can't see them for ourselves. And that's the question. That's what it's getting at, that you have options. And by pulling some of these into your consciousness now, you can make small pivots, small pivots. And here's why this matters, even though it can be confronting to think about this. Once you entertain what you could do, if the current plan just disappeared, something interesting happens. Fear starts to lose its grip. You stop telling yourself, oh my gosh, if I lose this job, I'm completely screwed, if AI takes over, my life is over, if that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that. And instead you go, well, there's always a plan B because I'm willing to see a plan B, that if I lost my job, if all the things that I currently do disappeared, I actually believe in my capability of figuring it out. I believe that I'll figure out options. I do believe that if a door closes, another one opens. Period. I love that. And that brings me to my favorite question of all three. I love this question and you're going to love this too. And we're going to get to it after this break. Alrighty, welcome back. It's your buddy, Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are going through something called the Odyssey Plan, which is a series of questions that you ask yourself. This was designed by two extraordinary professors at Stanford. It's taught in one of their most popular courses. We've already gone through the first two questions. How will your life look if you stay on the current path? If your path disappears tomorrow, what would you do? And I am so proud of you for being here, for really grappling with these questions, for allowing new thinking to enter, for seeing new possibilities, for feeling the shift in your mindset. Thank you for sharing this with people that you care about. I can't wait to hear what happens when you do these questions again with your friends and with your family. Now, let's talk about the third question. My favorite one of all. You ready? Well, I love this one. How would life look if there was nothing holding you back? Now, this is a swing for the fences kind of question. This is a Mel Robbins kind of question because this one's full of possibility. This is like unbridled permission for you to dream, for you to see a bigger possibility for yourself. Just for a second, let's entertain this question. How would your life look and feel if there's nothing holding you back? I'm saying money is not an issue. You don't care about other people's expectations. Nope, let them, right? We don't care about that. You could go anywhere. You could do anything. This third question is full freedom in your life. Forget about the kids. Forget about the dogs. Forget about everybody that you take care of. Forget about the bills just for this second. Let's just entertain the possibility because when was the last time you let yourself daydream for real? No, I mean it. When was the last time you just threw caution to the wind and you allowed yourself to imagine a possibility, a future, a life where you were not encumbered by everything that's holding you back right now? Really just let your mind wander. How would my life look and feel if nothing was holding me back? There's no voice in your head going up. That's ridiculous. You can't be a travel blogger at your age. You could never pull that off. What makes you think you could build an app? You're too old to go back to school. You didn't major in medicine. Now you want to go back and be a holistic health coach? What's wrong with you? Well, if you're like me and like most people, the last time you allowed yourself to just open up the doors of possibility, crack open your heart. Last time was when you were a kid because back then you could imagine becoming an astronaut in the morning and a rock star by the afternoon because nobody told you it was impossible. I mean daydreaming was so good. It's not a waste of time. It's how you uncover what you want. It's how you excavate all that unfinished business that's underneath the noise of the bills, the responsibility, other people's expectations and opinions, the trappings of the life that you have right now, the weight that you feel. That's why this question matters because it's fun. It's fun to think about this, isn't it? I mean most of the choices that you've made so far, it's probably just like the choices I've made for a lot of my life. It's not about what you really want. It's about survival. It's about paying the bills. It's about status and keeping up appearances and making your parents proud and making sure that you're doing what all the neighbors are doing and that your kids are in the right travel league and that you're doing the right major and that you're driving the right car. All that stuff that just weighs you down. But this question, oh, this is about something else entirely. This question blows the door open and asks, "If you had enough, if nobody was watching, if you didn't know anybody anything, what would you do with your life? What would you choose to focus your time on today?" Research shows that you are the happiest when you live from intrinsic values, when you're aligned with growth and connection and contribution rather than chasing money, chasing approval, trying to keep up with everybody else. I mean it's exhausting, all these shoulds in your life. There was a study in 2015 done by Kim Kasser at Knox College and it was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology. This study found that people who were focused on these inner values, contribution, connection, doing something meaningful, relationships, joy, reported higher life satisfaction and way less anxiety than everybody else who's busy chasing status or wealth. I think we know this deep down. The chasing status, money, fame, all that crap doesn't matter. What matters is whether or not when you lay your head on the pillow at night, you feel like you're a good person. You know that that unfinished business, which by the way is connected to your values, that's why unfinished business haunts you. That's why your unfinished business is different than mine because it's tied to something deeper. When you know that you did the best that you could with the time that you had today, that you inched yourself closer to the things that matter to you, you know that you're living a good life. That's what this question is uncovering, is it's also asking you, what if other people's opinions weren't holding you back? What if the guilt that you feel, the expectations that you feel, what if that fear that people are going to judge you or that you're going to fail and then all of a sudden you're going to be embarrassed or that people are going to misunderstand you? What if that wasn't holding you back? You could go on social media today and put your music out. What if you could go on social media today and talk about that new business? What if you could go on social media today and say, I've just done the Odyssey plan, it's this thing at Stanford, it's so cool, and I've realized I want to make a big pivot. If any of you that follow me do, I don't know, your yoga instructor, would you tell me in the comments what would be the first move you would make? I mean, this is so powerful because the single biggest thing in your way, it's actually not money. It's your fear of what other people are going to think. And if you've read the let them theory or you've already started using let them and let me in your life, you know that other people are the single biggest waster of your time and energy because you're spending too much time and energy managing everybody else's feelings, making everybody else happy, being worried about what other people are going to think and do and feel. I got a better way to live your life. Let them. Let them misunderstand you. Let them unfollow you. Let them be disappointed that you no longer want to have the big corporate career. You actually want to sell everything and go become a farmer and live off the land and do something cool that makes your heart sing. Let them think whatever they're going to think because guess what? They already think negative thoughts about you anyway. So just let them and take all that time and energy back and ask yourself, let me, let me answer this question. How would my life look if other people's opinions were holding me back? What would my life feel like if I could let other people misunderstand me or have their expectations or be disappointed and I could still do what I'd like to do with this one precious amazing life that I have? What if I started making changes today even though people didn't get it? If they tease me, what if what if I changed the way that I eat and I went vegan or gluten-free or I started lifting weights and my family's going to pick on me because nobody does that kind of thing? Let them. So let's take a deep breath. Let's pretend you got the money handled. Let's pretend no one's watching and that nothing is holding you back. Just I know it's hard, but just let yourself dream for a minute. Would you maybe coach your kids soccer team? Would you spend your day at the Humane Society, you know, a pet shelter? Would you take up building things, whether it's Legos or Puzzles or maybe you're going to build a little shed in the backyard? Where would you live? I mean, how does a cabin in the mountain sound? Sounds pretty good to me. How about living on a beach somewhere? What about a little boat sailing around the world? And who would be there? Who would you be spending your time with if you weren't working all the time? If you weren't grinding it out to pay bills and do all this stuff? This is just a dreaming exercise. I want you to notice how quickly you start to go. No, we're in expansion mode. Would you spend more time with friends that you love? Would you spend less time with colleagues that you're just tolerating? What is it that you want to feel in your life? Freedom? Do you want to feel more creative? Do you want it to be more adventurous? Do you want to have more artistry, a sense of belonging? Do you want to feel more engaged in your community? And please, don't limit yourself. This is the Odyssey plan. I want you to go on an Odyssey in your mind and allow yourself to feel what it's like to be the hero in your life. What does that feel like for you? You know, one of the producers on the Mel Robbins podcast has a friend, Henry, and Henry did the Odyssey plan. Asked himself these three questions, allowed himself to just stay dream. And do you know what his big dream was if nothing was holding him back? It was to take over a beautiful old farmhouse surrounded by cats named after movies and movie stars. Names like the great cats be. I mean, it sounds silly, right? Well, guess what? It doesn't matter. Because Henry's saying, let them, let them laugh at my cat names. Let them laugh at my dream because this is unfinished business for me. Just like whatever it is that's coming to your mind and heart is unfinished business to you. It's not about other people. It's about you. Henry also put down owning an 86 inch TV, a vending machine that spits out never ending free Italian ice. See, that's the point. Even if it sounds silly, ridiculous. How about you and I be like Henry and just write it down? Just write it down. I will tell you that I used this exercise several years ago. Several years ago, I didn't host a podcast. Several years ago, this would have been about six years ago, I made a living by traveling 150 days a year and speaking at large corporate events. If Microsoft were doing a big event, they would hire me and I would be on the stage and there would be thousands of people. In fact, I've done almost seven events for Microsoft. I've done 51 for JP Morgan. I've spoken at Starbucks, all these amazing companies. It was an incredible way to make a living. And then occasionally, I would write a book. I wrote the five second rule, I wrote the high five habit. But there was just a sun finished business for me. There's something stirring inside me. And do you know what it was when I really said to myself that the path that you're on disappeared tomorrow, what would you do? If all of this speaking business melt disappeared, if no one ever bought another book, all your followers online disappeared, what would you do? And the answer was very clear at the time. It was I would start a podcast. But then all the excuses came in. Well, there's six million podcasts and Spotify alone. And almost nobody makes money in podcasting, only like the top big shows make money. And how am I going to pay for the people that are on my payroll? And how am I going to be able to pay my mortgage because I now have a house that the mortgage is bigger than it used to be when I was really struggling. And so how am I going to make this all work? And what about this? But I allowed myself to dream. How would life look if nothing was holding me back? And I kept having this vision. And here was the vision. The vision was, imagine a world where I had a podcast and the podcast was based in Boston. I just opened up my mind and my heart to the unfinished business. How cool would that be? And what's super fascinating when you truly allow yourself to do this is, and I want you to do this. I want you to write about this. I want you to write down what is your life look and feel like. And guess what? Something incredible happens when you do the process you're doing right now. It doesn't appear like a unicorn and magically fall out of the sky. What happens is way cooler by asking yourself these three questions. You are now cracking open possibility that's always been there. You are giving your dreams permission to get out of your brain and exist out into the world and right in front of you on paper. So let yourself bask in that for a minute. Drop the rules. Get rid of the money worries for just a second. You can have them back in a minute. Ignore the judgment and just imagine. You're built to imagine. Your mind knows how to wander like that. Isn't it interesting how quickly you can reconnect with the part of you that knows what you really want? It's like that unfinished business. I love that. And so I want you to pay attention right now how good it feels to just dream a little. And even if your answer for question three seems like, "Okay, well, it's a little out there. It's a little out there." It's still giving you clues to exactly what you need now. You need more of this, okay? That's what you need. All right. So you're probably thinking, "All right, what do I do with this smell?" Because I've got the three questions. And I want to acknowledge you. I want to acknowledge you for not only listening or watching to something that is based in research and that is going to help you create a better life. But I want to acknowledge you for taking the time to answer the questions. And so if you're now like in it and you're wondering, "Okay, now what?" Great question. You've opened up a map. You've opened up a map in your life. And I want you to look at everything that you've thought about and that you've written down. And now I want you to think about, "Okay, I have this big map, and my current life is taking me over here. But when I really suspend all the judgment and I tap into daydream, I kind of want to go over here." And now here's what you're going to do. And this comes from the course at Stanford. I want you to pick one thing, one destination, one direction you want to head in, one thing that just catches your interest. See, the questions gave you points on this map. They gave you the insight and the direction that you need. You're not stuck. You're all lost. Deep inside you are the answers that have been there all along that put you back on a path that really makes you feel like more of yourself again. It makes you excited about life again. And so you're probably wondering, "Okay, well, how do I pull more of what I'm seeing in these questions into my life melt without having to blow everything up? Because these questions, I don't think, you know, maybe you are the person that says, "You know what? This is the clarity I needed. I have the money saved. I know what I'm going to do. I've been chicken and scared to just pull the cord and make the change. I'm doing it. I'm doing it." Like, thank you. The Odyssey Plan revealed that I knew what to do all along. I've been scared to do it. I know my plan B and I'm executing it today. I'm quitting the job. Okay, that could be one example. But more likely, you're just waking up to all these options and possibilities. You're starting to feel a sense of hope and optimism again. So how do you insert these insights into your life without really changing everything, quitting your job, blowing everything up? It's a great question. And I have the perfect example. So my husband Christopher has always wanted to write a book. And, you know, if you're asking yourself, what does he do for a living? Well, Christopher started a men's retreat called Soul Degree. And he leads those three times a year. And he also is a death doula. But he has been wanting to write a book. And he doesn't even know what the book is about. Okay, he just knows he wants to write a book. And so in doing the Odyssey plan, this was a couple of years ago, he recognized this. And so he's like, okay, the first change I'm going to make to bring this into my life now is I'm just going to create a new habit. This is a way, by the way, to change your current path. Because if you just change one habit, whether it's writing every day, or walking every day, or spending 15 minutes every day researching something you're interested in, you automatically change the path that you're on. And so Chris just started by adding writing to his morning routine. That's all that he did. Just every single day, he would write for 15 or 20 minutes. Well, recently, he had this huge epiphany that he really wants to go from just writing to truly writing a book. Well, what Chris did, and this is what I want you and invite you to think about, is he now put the most important thing first, he now wakes up at 5.15, he meditates, and then he writes, small change, different destination, different path. After he writes, he then goes and walks to dogs and exercises and starts his day. But you see how that small change first thing in the morning signals to him that the path that he's on is different. Writing isn't a nice to have, writing is who I am. Writing every day as the second thing I do after I'm out of bed signals to me that this is something that is important to me, and it now creates a small fork in the road that what? Creates an entirely different path. That's how you can do it. You literally can make one change a day. That's it, and you don't need an hour. You could dedicate 15 minutes a day to researching cat names and vending machines that spit out Italian ice. You could research flower farms and what does the P&L look like and how do people get started and how long does it take? You could research online programs for nursing or becoming an EMT. You could stop by the ski resort and ask them for information about how you become part of ski patrol or a ski instructor. You could start following travel bloggers, and every 15 minutes as you're enjoying your coffee and eating your breakfast before you log on to work emails, you could be studying the stories of how people got started. That's how you do it with just one change. See, the professors at Stanford, professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, they're really smart. They don't just have you dream. They do this process where once they crack you open with these sneaky powerful questions and you're forced to entertain, "Oh, there are other options here. Oh, my excuses are keeping me from doing small things now. Oh, there's unfinished business." Once they have you cracked open like that, now they got you. And now what they want you to do is they call it create a prototype. That's the fancy word at Stanford for what I'm telling you to do, which is just figure out a small way to experiment with this thing. So what could that mean? It means you don't have to wait for the big thing to happen. You don't have to blow up your life tomorrow. You can take clues from all of your answers and just test them. It's just like running a little experiment. And here's how you have to do it. You can go back, re-listen to this, answer the questions, dig in deep, and circle anything that made you perk up a career idea, a skill you want to learn, a person you want to spend more time with, a hobby that you want to engage in, or just a feeling that you want more of. And there's your material. And now pick one and ask yourself, "What's the small low stakes way that I could explore that?" If you wrote down, for example, that you would love to live somewhere else. Everyone's all hot on Montana right now. Your prototype might be signing up for a short trip, but if you can't afford that, it's not in the budget right now. No problem. How about talking to somebody who already lives there to get a sense of what it's like? Or here's an even easier way to prototype this. Go to street view on Google. Go to Google Maps, click on street view, and just cruise through the landscape, as if you're in a car cruising around. Because maybe you're going to cruise in there and prototype this and be like, "Wait, this town is only two blocks long? This isn't what I imagined." Or, "Oh, this doesn't really look like that series Yellowstone. I was kind of imagining something else." Or maybe you'll be like, "Oh my gosh, my heart is singing. I got to find a way to move there. I got to find a way to save some money and go on a trip there instead of blowing it every week and going out on the bars and buying things online that don't matter." See how this starts to work? Because now you all of a sudden are elevating what matters. And so your time and energy and money now become important. Because now that you see what matters, you start to see what doesn't matter. You start to see what you're wasting time and money and energy on. And that means you can claw it back and start saving it for some of the things that matter. Or if you wrote that you want more creativity, your prototype might be take a weekend class at the local art center. Or maybe watch a YouTube video or a how-to session on painting or sculpting or knitting or playing the ukulele or whatever it is that you want to do. Or maybe you just recognize that, "Oh my god, I live in a concrete jungle. I work in a square building. I ride in elevators. I live in a square apartment. I am dying for nature." So now it's like, "I got to just start where I am. I got to get outside every day and take a walk for a half an hour. And if I can get a lap in the local park, even better." Or if you wrote down that you want to be happily married in five years, but you're currently single, it could be simple as expanding your circle. It could be signing up for a new activity or event where you're going to force yourself to talk to people. Because you're going to meet people at this event that are interested in what you're interested in. Or if you're still in the dating apps, I mean, there's experiments that you can run there, too, and prototype this. Change your profile picture. Update your bio. Message somebody that you'd normally overlook. Have your friends rewrite it for you. Could you model a couple that you admire? If being happily married means cooking dinner together, could you experiment by cooking a full meal for yourself or for some friends with intention before you're in the relationship? I'm talking music, candles, the whole vibe. Practice creating the life you want to share with someone else because it feels good. See how this Odyssey plan works and see how prototyping works. It's not quit your job tomorrow unless you are ready to, and you're excited about that. And this episode is exactly what you needed. But for most of us, it's not move across the country. It's these massive insights. It's this unfinished business that comes to the top. It's the things that re-energize you, and it means something to you. But now we're going to do it in tiny, low-stake experiments that just give you information. Because every time you run a little experiment, you write a new song. You learn something valuable about yourself. You get feedback. You figure, okay, does this feel right? Does it not feel right? That's how you design your life, one little experiment at a time. And over time, something interesting happens. The more my husband wakes up and meditates and then writes, the more he's going to develop a vivid picture of what really matters to him. And the same is going to happen to you. The more that you wake up every day and you just experiment with these things, you learn a little bit more, you do a little bit more, you're going to learn what energizes you and what trains you. You're going to learn where you want to go next and, "Oh, I can leave this behind." And here's the other thing. What I love about these little experiments is you can also find ways to make the big, intimidating stuff feel like super doable. Let me give you two examples. Maybe you thought, "Okay, I've always wanted to move to Spain. That's my unfinished business. That's what I'm going to do." But after really testing the idea, you start exploring online. You start watching videos about people that have moved there. You start really looking into what this means. You realize, "Okay, wait a minute. I don't actually want to uproot my whole life. I just want the energy and adventure that moving to Spain would bring." And so then you find smaller ways to create that sort of energy and adventure of travel right where you are. I mean, there are things that you could be exploring in the town next store if that's what you're looking for. I'll give you another example. I used to dream of owning a bakery and then I did an experiment. I got a job working in one and it took exactly two shifts working at a bakery and getting up at 4.30 in the morning and filling all the napkin stuff and refilling the cream in the milk and waiting on people and then going home and smelling like a carrot muffin and not being able to wash it out of my clothes to make me realize, "You know what? I don't really want to own a bakery. I like the idea of going into a bakery." That's a really powerful experiment because now I understand that my unfinished business isn't in owning it. It's in having the kind of life where I have the time to enjoy it, but that's the power of experimenting. It's not about locking yourself into a big decision. It's about unlocking the full possibility of your life. It's about breaking free of all of the excuses that right now keep you narrowly focused on what you're doing and all of the lame things you tell yourself that aren't true, that you don't have time. You can't possibly do this. It's about widening your gaze to everything that's available to you right now that could make your life great. Gathering clues and letting those clues pull you forward into whatever it is that's going to call to you next. What I also love about this episode is that this is a free resource for you. You can come back to the Odyssey plan to these three questions over and over and over again. You can share this at any point you want with anyone in your life who may feel stuck or have so many excuses or needs these questions and this process to help them shake things up and to create a new roadmap for their life. Isn't it awesome how easy this is? And before you know it, what I love is you're not going to feel like your life is on one track. You're going to feel a whole new possibility open up for you and isn't that a great thing? In fact, you're not going to be the same person when you're done. That's my hope. My hope is that something profound gets revealed to you that you realize that you too have unfinished business in this lifetime. That there are more things for you to do, to see, to feel, to become in this odyssey of twists and turns and ups and downs and highs and lows that we call life. And one more thing I wanted to say in case someone else doesn't say it to you today. As your friend, I want to tell you that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And more importantly, you are capable of creating the change that you now see. Alrighty, I'll see you in the very next episode. I'll be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play. There's that famous Einstein quote, right? The definition of genius. What is that quote? I don't even know what that quote is. See, I'm citing quotes, everybody. And I don't know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting something else to happen. So let me ask you this question again. I told you it was brutal. I mean, this is really brutal. Can you bring the cue down because it's you're about three inches higher than the camera itself? Go up. Right there's perfect. Okay. Is it that Wendy? What is that? What is ginger? It's a weather vane that I'm gonna have to have removed from this. All right, great. Let's have lunch. Is that ending okay? Cause I was like super distracted by what's happening out here. That's how we do it, people. Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.