3 Simple Tools to Get Unstuck & Completely Change Your Life with Mel Robbins

The following podcast is a deer media production. This is Well, a podcast about wellness in all its forms. I'm Aria Laurie, and each week I'm sharing unfiltered conversations with people shaping how we feel, live, and look. Come for the substance, stay for the honesty, and leave with the tools to be well, inside and out. When I tell you that today's episode was my Super Bowl, I'm really not exaggerating, and I know that so many of you have been looking forward to it as well because when I shared a photo with my guest and I back when we recorded this episode, I got such a crazy, massive overwhelming response from my audience. A lot of you said that it was your world's colliding, so I cannot wait to bring you this conversation with the one and only Mel Robbins. Mel really doesn't need an introduction, but I'm going to give her one anyway. So she's the host of the Mel Robbins podcast, which is ranked the third largest show globally on Spotify. The number one most followed show on Apple podcasts, and the number one most shared show on both Apple and Spotify Wild. Her podcast is also about to hit an absolutely insane milestone of 1 billion downloads, billion with a B. She's also the author of the Let Them Theory, the number one bestselling book of 2025 and 2026. So needless to say, Mel has definitely become one of the most influential voices in personal development and for good reason. So today we're talking about how to actually change your life, not just think about changing it or make a plan to change it, but how to really get unstuck and start doing things differently. So Mel shares three incredibly practical tools that can completely shift how you approach your habits, your relationships, and your goals. We get into why we stay stuck, how to make yourself do things that you don't want to do, why your average Tuesday might be the unlock and tell you everything that you need to know about your life, and how to become the person that you actually want to be. And we also talk about boundaries, relationships, why making yourself proud is so important and a morning habit that Mel and I did not see eye to eye on. However, I would like to report that I have since changed my ways. So Mel, if you're listening, I've been doing the notepad and it's been great. Mel is exactly as passionate, funny, and candid as you would hope. We self-disclose a lot in this episode and I do feel like there are a lot of parallels between what I've gone through with my recovery journey and what Mel went through rebuilding her life, and I love that she doesn't just tell you to change your life. She tells you exactly how to do it because she's walked the walk. So this conversation is just packed with advice that you can put into practice immediately. And I think you're going to get so much out of it. So take your notepads out and enjoy this conversation with Mel Robbins. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. I told you before, such an honor to have you here. I mean, you are, as far as podcasters go, the top of the top of the top. And I just love everything that you do. And I'm just beyond honored that you're here. So thank you. Well, I appreciate the invitation. Yeah. I have been doing a deep dive. I've been a fan of your content for a long time. But in preparation for this episode, I learned so much about you. Oh. And when I was thinking about where to take this conversation for my audience, there were a few things that really stood out to me, but the main thing was this idea of feeling stuck and getting unstuck, because, you know, and I think I told you this off my egg or I told your team. But a lot of my audience is in that 35 to 44 range with outliers on either end, of course. But the content that I put out that seems to really resonate with them is how to reinvent yourself, how to change, how to get out of being stuck. And I feel like a lot of people aren't in that age range where they might not be living the life that they want to live. They're living the life that's maybe expected or maybe they're not exactly where they thought they would be. So I want to start there and talk about your story a little bit and where you were when you were my age. I'm 41. So. Oh, my God. I know. Yeah. Wow. But what you've done from that age to now is absolutely incredible and it's so inspiring. So let's let's start there. Take us back. I absolutely will. But first, I want to say something about being stuck being stuck is I think one of the most universal experiences in life. And it is profoundly misunderstood. When you are stuck, it does not mean things are broken. It means it's time for a change. And you can go through years of your life on autopilot, feeling discouraged and checked out, but there comes a moment where you start to say the word stuck. I feel stuck. And what that means to me is you just woke up and you are starting to realize that there is more that you want out of life. And there are two things I want to say about feeling stuck and being able to recognize that you are stuck. Number one, it's the first step to changing your life for the better. Because until you wake up and say, how my life feels no longer works for me, you will not change. And the second thing that you need to know is if you change nothing, nothing changes. And if you right now are listening, and you're kind of nodding along and you're thinking to yourself, yeah, there are aspects of my life, whether it's my job or my health or the relationship I'm in or where I live that no longer feels like me, congratulations. Because that means you are about to change and begin something new. And that's the greatest gift you could give yourself is permission to change. So if I go back to 41 and I look at you and I think about what my life looked like when I was your age, I was unemployed, I was $800,000 in debt. My husband, Chris and I had have three kids and at the time they were 10 and under. His restaurants were failing. But I became a person I didn't recognize. I had always been somewhat of a positive person. I had always been a bit of a go-getter. And in life, I think that we all have a vision for what we think is going to happen. And Ariel, there's never a moment where I thought, you know, it'd be great. What would be great is if I got to be 41, if I could be a million dollars in debt, if I hated my husband, if I was unemployed, if I had crushing anxiety, if I couldn't afford grocery, that would be my dream life. And when you get to these moments in life and every one of us has them, where your life doesn't turn out how you thought it would, you are either going to meet the moment with a lot of courage and with motivation to change, or you'll do what I did, which is you will crumble and become a shell of yourself. And you'll start to do everything you can to avoid the things that you could be doing that start to change everything. And so at 41, I could barely get out of bed. I would have four bourbon Manhattan's a night. When my husband would walk in the door, I'd be like, "I hate him, this is his fault." I was constantly on edge, and yelling at my kids. I avoided my friends. I was embarrassed by the state of our life. That was my life. That's not what I thought it was going to be, but that's what it was. And if you and I were chatting back then, I would have come up with a million reasons. Oh, it's just not fair. My husband's an idiot. We never should have gone into the restaurant business. Why did I let him talk me into getting a home equity line? Why did I let him talk me? Well, I was just as responsible as he was. When everything went off the rails, I started to point the finger. And I'm sure you've heard this saying that, you know, when you point the finger at the world or the government or everybody else, there's always three fingers back at you. And what that means is it means the power to change your life doesn't come from blaming other people. It comes from taking responsibility for what you can do now. And for me, I probably spent 18 months of this period of my life blaming my husband, blaming the recession because this was 2008 when there was a housing crisis in the United States. And we were going through a huge recession. And like right now, it's happening for people. A lot of people could not find jobs. A lot of people were getting fired. And I had no idea how we were going to get out of that mess. That was my life. I did not look and feel like this. As you're talking, I can relate a lot even though the circumstances were very different because I was a hope to die addict and alcoholic. I've been in recovery for a long time. And there's a lot of parallels there because one of the core components when you're in active addiction is denial, right? And blame. It's so much easier to point the finger and I love that. I always say four fingers pointing back at you. So when you said three, I was like, that makes more sense. It's so much easier to look at the things and the people around you and blame them instead of taking accountability. But I think that when you hit that moment of rock bottom, and I talk about this a lot too, that is the best place to be, in my opinion, if you're then willing to make a change. And I've heard you talk about this as well. You talk about being stuck is essentially information. And if you do have that motivation, it's a great place to be, because you can kind of only go up from there, hopefully. And, you know, I always say with my own story, like, I'm so grateful to be so desperate. Because when you're so desperate, that's really when the motivation comes most easily, I think. - Well, I think it's the gratitude, I don't know about you, but in the moment, I was not grateful. - No, no, no, no, it's all in hindsight. - Yes, yes. I have a question for you, though, because we're talking about blame, and there are very real circumstances that people face in their life. There are very real problems in the world right now. And when I say blame, and I think when you say blame, what happens is, at least for me, and I'm curious if you felt this way, there was a lot of fear that I had, that my problems were so big that there was no way I was going to figure this out. And when you were struggling with active addiction, was part of the thing that was in your way from hitting rock bottom, this fear that you wouldn't actually be able to get sober? - I've learned a lot about myself in the years that I've been in recovery, and fear was, and remains my biggest obstacle, absolutely. When I was getting divorced, it was all fear, starting a new project, a lot of fear. But I think because I did have that experience of almost dying from addiction and everything, and I think that you have this experience too, you remember how hopeless it was, and I feel like since I got a second chance, I'm not gonna squander it, so I might feel the fear but I'm doing it anyway. But to answer your question, when I was in that place with addiction and alcoholism, I know that you were drinking a lot at that time, that's your medicine. That was the thing that was enabling me to cope with the circumstances of my life at the time, and so anything that came between that was like, or anybody, persona non-grata. So terrifying to think of losing that, because then what are you left with? So the fear had a lot to do with that, it had a lot to do with not knowing what my life would look like, and we're allergic to uncertainty. I know you talked to so many experts on your show, and you've talked about this before too, your brains are literally wired to stay in the familiar, even if it's uncomfortable. So that was a lot of it too, and then just asking for help. There's so much shame, whether you're in alcoholic or you're just not where you thought you would be, and you need to ask for help, it's so shameful, I think that that holds a lot of people back. - Yeah, I think for me, when you talk about the rock bottom thing, I often say, I've said this in the last year to a couple people in my life who have been really struggling, I've said to them, look, do you want it to get worse before it gets better, because it's going to? And we gaslight ourselves when we're in a situation that isn't working, and we know it, and there's fear there, whether it's leaving a job, or it's moving somewhere new, or it's ending a relationship, or it's stopping drinking, or it's just having one of those very painful conversations with yourself, where you say, Mel, the bullshit that you are doing right now just, it no longer works, like I'm sick of you, I'm sick of your excuses, I'm sick of being really just like disgusted, by the way that you're acting, like pull it together. I think you've got to ask yourself, if you're in a situation right now, or a chapter of your life where you're not happy, do you want it to get worse before it gets better, because if you change nothing, nothing will change. And you changing yourself, or changing the situation, or changing the relationship, or changing your habits, that's the only thing you can control. Now, I didn't know any of this back 17 years ago when I was 41, I just knew that I hated myself, I hated my husband, I hated my life, and I knew that while nobody else was going to fix this, nobody was stopping me from fixing it either. And you will get to a point where staying where you are is more painful than doing the thing you are avoiding. And what I will tell you right now, because I think you and I both would like for the person listening, or watching right now, to not waste years of their lives suffering, to not let it get worse before it can get better. You can decide to change your life anytime you want to. You get to determine how much pain you need before you're going to decide to do that. And for me, that I think was the single biggest lesson. And it was learning this skill, and it started with getting out of bed in the morning on the mornings I didn't want to, learning how to make yourself do the things that you don't feel like doing, learning how to make yourself do the things that you're scared to do, learning how to let other people think what they're going to think and start putting yourself out there in ways that you know are going to make you proud of yourself or at least less miserable. That's what you have to do. Whether or not you need more suffering in your life before you choose to do that is entirely up to you. And I hope that by the end of this conversation, whatever it is that you've been talking yourself out of and arguing against and to chicken shit to do, I hope by the end of this conversation, you realize that you're sick of where you are, that you're sick of your excuses, that there is something more for you that is meant to be experienced in your life. And only you pushing yourself out of this moment and this relationship and they set of habits, only you doing that work is the thing that's going to change it. Here's something that you don't consider. So I want you to stop and think about your life right now as your listener watching. And when you're in your life, you don't often pick your head up and look ahead. Yeah. And when you're in your day to day life, you don't think about the fact that the path that you're on right now is a path. So let's just say that nothing changes in your life. And let's roll the clock forward five years. And right now, it's 2026. So let's say it's 2031, nothing's changed. Are you happy with where you are? Are you happy in the career you have? Are you happy living where you live? Are you happy in the relationship or not a relationship? Are you happy with the state of your health? Truly consider that because you don't stop and think that the path that you're on has a destination. And if things go okay, it's leading you somewhere. Is that actually where you want your life to go? And if the answer is oh, no. Then wake up and do something. You get one life and the amount of your life that you waste, dicking around with people that treat you with disrespect, chasing the validation from people you don't even respect. The amount of time you waste just mainlining social media and making yourself feel bad about it, it's just stupidity. If you want a different life, you have the ability to change and it starts now. And I think I would just keep coming back to this idea that if I change nothing, nothing changes. My life is leading me somewhere and if I don't like it, I have the ability to change it. And it begins with how you spend an average Tuesday. This is another huge insight that really changed my life. Yeah, I would look at everybody else's life especially when I was struggling and I would think, oh my gosh, why didn't I marry a guy in finance? You know, I married this dude who cares about people. Like why didn't I marry somebody that was chasing money? Like why didn't I, why I made all these mistakes? Like I want her life, I want that life. And you know, I was chasing what I thought other people's life looked like. I wasted so much time doing that. And I missed for years the answer, which is the person that stares back at you in the mirror every single morning is the one person you spend your entire life with. That's the person that needs to be proud of you. That's the person that's gonna change your life. And you change your life not by thinking about the big things. Here's how you change your life. Think about the average Tuesday. If I were to follow you around on a Tuesday, what would I see? What time do you get up? - Usually between 6.30 and 7. - Great. - I will. - What's the first thing you do? - Honestly. - Oh, no, yeah, I talk about this all the time. I've tried the sunlight in the eyes. I've tried the meditating before I look at my phone. I just can't, I look at my phone. - Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. - Oh, okay. - Won't. I won't, yeah. - Won't, okay, so let's be honest about that. And as you're listening or watching, everywhere you say can't, I want you to insert won't. - Okay. So I won't, but I don't find that it has negative consequences for me. - I disagree with you entirely. And I think you know that. You look embarrassed right now. - I do? - Yes. - You know that this is not a habit. And I wanna applaud you for going here with me because the person listening myself included, I struggled with this for a long time. And I want you to really unpack this. Because if you want to feel like you come first in your life, the way to do that is to wake up in the morning for yourself and to make sure the input that goes into your brain or through your ears or through your eyes that the input first thing in the morning is for you. And there is nothing on that phone that is more important than you and your mindset, your body regulation, your intention during the morning, your spiritual practice, which is not about religion, it's about you aligning yourself with a bigger vision for your life. And truly waking up in a way that you put all of that before the world. Because what's on the phone is everybody else's stuff. And the second that you look at it, I don't care how much resetting we do or walks or everything else, it already imprinted first thing in the morning. I don't want you to do that. Okay. I don't. I'm going to be defensive for one second. I'm going to make my argument. Do it. I have tried. Are you actually going to argue with me about the fact that you think on a wellness podcast looking at your phone? I'm so honest about that this is like my vice. But for me, the reason that I do it is because I feel like I do all my things. I have my meditation. I do my recovery reading. So I do my journaling and everything after you look at your phone. I find that I have. I really struggle with like that monkey mind of like, okay, I have to do this and then I have to do that. And so for me, if I wake up, I just make my to-do list, get it all out, brain dump it. And then I put the phone away. And then my mind is a little bit less cluttered. And then I'm like, okay, let's lock in. I do my readings. I get in that spiritual place. I do my meditation. And there's less friction for me. So, yes, that is something that I could absolutely change. Can I make it work my best? Yes. Okay. I love that you're open to this. You're very cute when you're embarrassed. I would love to see you have an opad. Oh, yes, I do believe in pen to paper. Okay. And you know, for you listening or watching, I'm going to advise you to do the same thing. And there's two reasons why I want you to do this. Number one, there's a very interesting research about sleeping and falling asleep. That when you go to bed at night, if you have a pad of paper next to you and you do a brain dump before you go to sleep, the research shows that it helps your mind close those open loops because you've dumped it out of your head onto paper. And I believe we'd have to look this up to be sure. And I'm working on memory as a 58 year old menopausal woman. Sometimes the dots aren't connecting. But I believe that the research showed that people fall asleep faster by making a to-do list on a piece of paper and doing a brain dump than with a sleeping aid. And it has to do with your mind not having to keep these unfinished tasks open. It's like open tops. Yes. Yeah. In the morning, if your mind is racing, I would prefer, based on all the experts that have been on this show and my show, I would prefer that you have a piece of paper. And let me tell you why. I think there is a subconscious hard wiring that our mind and body has about holding the phone and what the phone represents. Because there's this really interesting study that they did related to the power of the phone on the subconscious mind. I don't remember who did the study, but when I explain it to you, a lot of people have talked about this. So you might be aware of this as you're listening. In the study, they had you and I talking, no phones around. Okay. And they mapped our brains. You could see brain activity. The researcher comes over and puts his or her phone on the table. Not my phone, not your phone. The brain activity completely changed in both our brains simply by having the phone present. And it was the researcher's phone. Wow. And so I believe that you would experience something at a deeper level if it wasn't even in your bedroom, that you created that space for yourself. And for you listening, I want you to think about this. Don't you deserve five to 15 fricking minutes in the morning before you let your fricking boss and your friends and all the memes and all the AI crap into your brain. If you want to know why you're waking up with anxiety, it's because you lay in bed and pour this negativity into your mind and then expect somehow to breathe it out. It doesn't work that way. You have to start to create space for your brain to exhale. You have to create space so that whatever input your conscious about. So when I wake up in the morning, I don't look at that. I don't, I can't, I'm such an addict. I can't have it on my body. I can't have it on my dresser. Like it might as well be an eight ball of cocaine on my dresser because you just reflexively reach for it. And so if you want to create new habits, one of the fastest way to do it is change your environment. Make the thing that you're trying to not do, put it out of sight. And so if you would like better boundaries with your phone, if you would like to wake up and not have panic attacks and crushing anxiety, if you would like to have a little space in the mornings that you could have a slower morning and you could be more intentional about what is your intention for the day? What is the best way for you to wake up? Because if you are waking up anxious looking at your phone, you've already lost a day. It's gone. You're in ketchup from for the rest of the day. Why would you do that to yourself? Why not try giving yourself five to 15 minutes before you look at your phone? And for those of you that are anxious about the fact that you have a job that may need you or you have, you know, family that needs to reach you. No problem. Here's what you do. You say to everybody, hey, I'm really trying to have better boundaries as my phone. And I'm not going to have my phone near me when I'm sleeping. It's going to be plugged in. The ringer is on. If you need me, call me. But don't text because I'm not going to look at it. And I'm probably not going to look at it till about eight o'clock in the morning. You will be shocked how many people do not call you, but people text you all night long and you would dump me there responding. And then you'd like, well, why was so anxious? Oh, I don't know. So I would love to see what happens in your life if you were to do that for just two or three days. I'm going to report back. Please do. I am open to that because I also think you're going to find that you're more creative. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Okay. So Mel Robbins is obviously my guest today. And she has already called me out on one of my worst habits, which is getting on my phone first thing in the morning. She basically implored me to stop doing it. And I'm actually taking her advice. So instead of scrolling, I write things down on my notepad as she suggested. 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We track all of these things related to health. The single biggest one that would probably change how you feel day to day is tracking what input are you allowing. And one hack that helps me a lot is I think a lot about the way I want to feel in my life. And then I really control my environment to set me up to be able to make healthier choices. And I have massive boundaries with who and what is allowed into my mind and who and what gets my attention. I think you have to be kind of ruthless about it. And, you know, as far as the phones go and you were talking earlier about seeing other people's lives, I mean, now we're inundated with it. And it reminds me of this saying that we have recovery, which is that we compare our insides to other people's outsides. And that is something that we do have a ton of control over whether it's not following people, whether it's not whether it's blocking people, we do have some control over the algorithm. And then also just not being on it 24/7. True. I want to complete this average Tuesday thought because I want to make sure everybody takes us away as a tool. So I want you to think about just the average Tuesday in your life because your life is not the big things. Your life is a bunch of Tuesdays. That's your life. And I want you to really look at your current life. And you can do this by take a piece of paper draw a line down the center and on the left right now. And I want you to be honest about what does the average Tuesday look like? What time do you wake up? What's the first thing that you do? What are your morning routine look like? Even if you don't have a morning routine, you have a morning routine. It's running late. It's not eating. It's running on fumes. It's mainlining social. That's a morning routine. And so be honest about what your current life looks like. What does it look like on a Tuesday? What time to get to work? Do you like your job? Do you hate your job? What do you like about when do you leave work? Who do you hang out with? What are you doing throughout the day? What does your evening routine look like? Even if it's just kind of going and looking at Netflix and then bouncing to Apple and then going to HBO and then trying to find something to watch and then bounce and doing this thing and then looking at your, that's a routine. Now go to the blank side of the piece of paper. If you think about your life and you think about what you want your life to feel like. Let's go back to your stuck. If you weren't stuck, if you woke up and you had something to do, you had something to look forward to. You had someone to love and you had something that you were working on that made you feel alive. What time would you wake up? What is your morning look like? Do you exercise? What does work look and feel like? If you can answer those questions about what you want, that vision now gives you a map of what a Tuesday can look and feel like. If you can just start to move a few habits right now to look like the habits of a person who is living that life that you really want in the future, something incredible happens. The more you start to act like a person that you want to be, the more you start to act in a way that makes you a little proud of yourself. For me, it just began at the age of 41 with learning how to get out of bed when the alarm rang instead of hitting the snooze button six times in a row until the kids miss the bus. True story, just that one small decision changes the trajectory of your life because through the action you now are becoming a different person. You can use that takeaway of what does a Tuesday look like now? What do I want my life to look and feel like and what does that person in the future's life look like and what habits can I shift now because you're a living proof that the one decision I'm going to get sober. Change your entire life and that's how you can start to go from I'm really stuck and I hate myself and I hate my life and I hate everybody else. Yeah, but I'm finally going on pretending everything's great. I did that for a long time. To really getting serious about using the time that you have to create a life that you really enjoy. And I love how simple it was for you when you started. You started with five, four, three, two, one. I was telling the girls about that this morning and that really helps with that kind of chasm between what you know you should do and actually doing it. And I think that's where most people struggle. That's what we've been talking about. It's like knowing is only going to get you far enough and we talk about that in recovery too. Self knowledge is great, but it only gets you so far. It's not actually great because knowing what to do isn't great because you can get stuck thinking about it. And you know, if you don't know five, four, three, two, one, call it the five second rule. It's just like food on the floor. If you drop food on the floor, the rule is you got to pick it up within five seconds because the thinking is that if you leave it for more than five seconds, the floor will contaminate the food and make it unsafe. Same is true with your brain. If you think about something that you need to do for more than five seconds, your brain contaminates your motivation to do it. And so I developed this hack when I was four 41 years old, where I just started counting backwards 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and you got to count backwards. It doesn't work if you count up because if you're counting up, you've done that forever and so you can do it without even thinking. Counting backwards requires you to stop and concentrate. That's why this hack works. So you're manually switching gears between which part of the brain you're using. When you decide as you're laying in bed and you don't feel like getting up because you hate your job and you hate your life and you hate everybody else and you just wish you were living a different life and why weren't your parents rich and why can't you be thinner and why can't you have better clothes and why aren't you an influencer and why like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, move. You do not change your life by thinking about it. You change your life by acting like it and you will never be ready to act in a way that changes your life. Understand that motivation is garbage because you will never feel like doing what you need to do. Please stop and consider a truth about life. If you just did the stuff you don't feel like doing, you would have everything you wanted in 5 years. Just scan your. What do you not. You don't feel like saving money. You don't feel like investing the little bit of money that you may have. You don't feel like working on your resume. You don't feel like exercising. You don't feel like working through your jealousy. You don't feel like talking to a therapist. You don't feel like taking a beat before you yell at people. You don't feel like doing any of that stuff. And yet it's the things that you know would change your life. So you can use this count backwards technique 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 in those moments where another thing that you need to be doing is speaking up more at work. Too many of you sit around, mad that you're not getting promoted, mad that you're not getting seen, mad that your contributions aren't known, and yet you're silent in meetings. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Let's change that. After so many years of doing this, after writing your book, after talking to so many experts and so many women who are probably in this place and men, why do you think people stay in that place? I mean, what have you learned? Is it just what we were talking about before where people are kind of allergic to friction and discomfort and uncertainty that they would rather stay in the uncomfortable familiar than make that change? So why people stay stuck, there's two reasons. The first one is, most people don't have a clue what they want, and if you don't have a target, you can't hit it. You have to stop and ask yourself, what do I want? What do I want in my life? And a lot of you may have difficulty answering it, and you may have difficulty answering it for a number of reasons. You may not be able to answer the question, what do I want? Because A, you don't believe you can create it. B, you think you're too young or too old, it's too late, screwed up too much. C, you don't even know how to go from where you are to what that would even look like. You don't believe in yourself. You have so much evidence that everything else you've ever done, maybe you have issues related to the past, where you don't feel worthy of the thing that you want. There's a million reasons why it may be difficult to answer the question. You still have to ask yourself, what do I really want in life? Because if I can't answer that, then I better learn how to be grateful for what I got, because I'm just going to take what life is giving me, and I'm going to then just try to make the best of it, and that's still a great life. If you take whatever life gives you, and you learn how to be grateful for what you have, because if you can't be grateful for what's going well and for what you have now, you will never be grateful for the things that you go create. Number one, you got to answer the question, what do I really want? If you truly cannot give yourself permission to answer that question, then answer this. What do I not want? Because you may have an easier time identifying it from the negative, which is okay. Because I knew when I was 41 years old, I couldn't even imagine the life that I have right now. When you've got leans on your house, you can't pay your bills, you're unemployed, you hate yourself, you're drinking yourself, you can't imagine a dream life, but here's what I knew. I didn't want to lay in bed, rotting every morning. I didn't want to feel like the world's worst mother. I didn't want to lose my house. I didn't want to be in debt forever. I didn't really hate my husband. I was just afraid that we wouldn't get out of this. I didn't want my marriage to end. I didn't want to be drinking four Manhattan's every damn night and wake up every morning. I knew a lot. And so when you know what you don't want, just flip it. Oh, I don't want to rot in bed every morning and start my day by procrastinating and hitting the snooze button six times and laying in bed and staring at the ceiling and thinking about how much I hate myself. OK, then I guess I better get out of bed. So I guess I want to get out of bed. Oh, I don't want to drink a half a bottle of bourbon every night. OK, I guess I better stop drinking. Oh, I don't want to feel disgusting in my clothes and out of shape. OK, I guess I better start taking a walk every day. So you can answer the question, what do I want by identifying what you don't want? I don't want to be in this job for the rest of my life. I don't want to be in this relationship for the rest of my life. And that at least gives you a direction. And that direction is critical because now you can pick your head up and go, oh, I'm not just in the monotony of today. I mean, I love that analogy that a lot of people use about thinking about your entire life like a movie or a book. Wherever you are right now, this is not the end. This is not how the story ends. You're on page 117. We got a lot more chapters. What could it look like if you turned the page and we started a whole new chapter on 118? And then yes, her life sucked and then. And then yeah, and I love how you talk about when you were in that place. You weren't thinking, okay, this is what I'm going to do to get out of $800,000 of down. No, you weren't thinking macro. You were so in the micro and I think that that is probably something that keeps people in that place because it's so overwhelming thinking about overhauling everything and getting from point A to point Z instead of A to B, what can you do today? Yes. And I love how you break it down that way because it's so much more manageable one day at a time. Yeah, I feel like you have to be able to time travel out five to ten years and recognize that the path that you're on right now is leading you somewhere. And if you change nothing, nothing changes. Do you want your life and relationship and body and bank account to look and feel like it does five to ten years from now? There is the answer about whether or not it's time to change. And then I love using that same time traveling ability that we have to go to imagine something different. You know, my daughter's, the success has come so late in life. I often hear my daughters who are 28 and 26 say to their friends, look, I did not grow up with my mom like this, like my mom was the same person that you see, but we were not successful like this. And this is like a whole different reality. I mean, it's really exciting to me that most people globally know Mel Robbins because of what I've done in the last three and a half years in my late 50s. And the things that I share are not some crap I read on AI. These are the lessons I learned the hard way. I have lived this, which is why I'm so passionate about the things that I share because this saved me so many decades of heartache and headache. These are the things I wish I had known earlier. And I say to my daughters, because if you're in your 20s right now, it's very difficult. Being in your 20s right now is very different than even what being in your 20s five years ago was. When you look at the cost of housing in Boston alone, the price of housing has gone up. I think it's like 89% three years. The input of social media overtaking your life. The lack of trust in basic institutions that we've taken for granted and we thought would be around forever, the proliferation of AI, the tremendous disruption in careers and workforce, like I could go on and on and on. And so your parents don't have a clue what you're going through. In fact, if you have siblings that are five to ten years old in you, it's so different for you right now. And I say that because I know things are very challenging right now, which is why it's critical that you understand that you've got to really focus on what's in your control. And what's in your control is your mindset, what's in your control or your habits, what's in your control or who you give your time and attention to and who you allow into your life and it's the input, the input and the output. That's what you have to control. I believe personally, that you, when you really start to think about how do I want my life to feel? What kind of person do I want to be? I got to stop looking at everybody else for the validation. I got to figure out what would make me proud of yourself. You will figure it out. But what I say to my daughters all the time is, look, I'm 58. You're 26 or 28. Don't you think if you gave it 30 years, you could figure out how to be successful. You know how many idiots out there are making money? I think if you stopped like doing this in your bed in the morning and you set the intention in the next five years, I'm going to get really good with money. In the next five years, I'm going to figure out how to launch my own business. In the next five years, I'm going to achieve these goals. The issue is it starts with your intention. See, there's cause and effect and then there's what happens before the cause and effect. There's your intention that drives the actions that you take. And for me, the moment, like, thank God, when I was 41, I realized my life sucks and I don't want it to stay this way and my damn husband isn't going to fix this. So I guess it's on me and I say that jokingly because too many women in particular are waiting for a partner to fix their life. Yeah. You fix your life. Yeah. You learn how to be proud of yourself. You make the money to buy the things that you want and you will be startled at how different your relationships are because you don't need somebody to pay for your life. You can do that, which means you can be in a partnership with somebody instead of a financial transaction. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I relate to that so much. I think there is a huge difference between a moisturizer that just feels nice when you put it on and one that is actually formulated to do more for your skin, especially as we get older when maintaining hydration and that plump, bouncy look becomes so much more important and harder to achieve. And that's why I'm excited to talk about Paul's choice. I have always appreciated their science first approach to skincare and their peptide intensive moisturizer is such an interesting combination of serious hydration and skin supporting ingredients. 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So discover science-backed peptide powered hydration with Paul's choice peptide intensive moisturizer at PaulistChoice.com and use the code Well25 for 25% off your order of $100 or more. That's PaulistChoice.com code Well25. One of the more frustrating things as you get older is realizing that what worked for your body in your 20s and 30s doesn't necessarily work in your 40s. And the answer is not always to eat less and exercise more, even though sometimes that feels like that is the only solution. So we know so much more now about metabolism, muscle preservation, and how our bodies change with age, which is why I think Prolon is so interesting. So Prolon five day was developed at USC's Longevity Institute and it is a five day nutrition program designed to mimic the effects of fasting while you are still eating, which is huge. 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Something that I've heard you talk about back to what you were saying about control is that I think we have this instinct to try to control the people and the places and the circumstances and everything around us. And you've said that the more you try to control these things, the more out of control they feel. So I want to kind of segue to let them and let me. How does that relate to that piece of control? The lead them theory is the single most powerful thing I've ever learned in my entire life. And I created the theory. So it's after 50 years of doing it the wrong way, I finally figured out that the secret to life is learning how to let other people, the world at large, let them do their thing. And letting other people be who they are, letting other people say what they're gonna say, letting other people do what they're gonna do, this does not mean you're allowing anything. There's a big misconception about this. When you say let them, it's a boundary. It's a boundary that you erect between you and the rest of the world where you are reminding yourself what is in my control and what's not in my control. And the number one thing that's never in your control is other people. What they say, what they do, how they feel, whether or not they're disappointed, upset with you, any of it, whether or not they understand you, whether or not they like you, you cannot control any of it. And I didn't understand this. I thought if I just showed up a certain way and I was really nice, or I said yes, or I did this, or I did that a guaranteed that the person would like me. It doesn't. What it guarantees when you show up in the world, hoping it controls what other people think is a guarantees misery for you. Because you are focusing all your energy on trying to manipulate an outcome that's not in your control. So when you say let them, you're forcing yourself to recognize somebody else's mood, whether or not somebody likes me, whether or not I get promoted, whether or not politics go a certain way. That's out of my control. I'm not allowing people to do anything. I'm recognizing a situation for what it is and what it is. Then you go back and you say the second boundary, which has let me, let me remind myself in any situation. I only have in my control what I do next. That's it. That's it. And through my thoughts, through my actions, through my attention, through my habits, I can influence anything. By focusing on my response to the world, my response to this idiot, who I keep texting, by the way. Like let's talk about it in dating and relationships. Do you know how much energy we pour into chasing the wrong people? Oh, yeah. Into living in a fantasy in our minds, convincing ourselves that somebody that just sleeps with us and then sneaks out the door is interested in us. Let them let them through their behavior reveal that they actually want to sleep with you, but they don't like you. Let them then let me ask myself here, okay, is this good enough for me? Is this what I deserve? Because it's not somebody else's job to give you what you deserve. It's your job to recognize what you deserve and then demand it of yourself, not of somebody else. Because you can leave any relationship, you can leave any text chain, you can leave any conversation, any job, any dining room table, any time you decide to. The problem for me and for so many millions and millions of people who have read this book as we wake up and recognize, oh my god, I have been staying in toxic situations. And I've been spending all my time and energy thinking something's wrong with me. I've been explaining away disrespect instead of forcing myself to recognize that how somebody treats you is how they feel about you. And how somebody behaves is a function of two things. It's a function of their past and their unresolved issues and all of the experiences in their life and it's also a function of the present moment. Have they eaten anything? Are they under a lot of stress? Do they have a ton going on? It has almost nothing to do with you. And yet we run around and expend so much time and energy acting as if you can twist yourself and not and show up in just the perfect way so that that stranger online somehow finds you attractive or that friend who has never ever shown up in the way that you needed them to is somehow going to magically turn out to be somebody different. No, there's an easier way to go through life and I actually think it's a it's a more compassionate way. It's to force yourself to recognize people exactly as they are and exactly as they aren't. And then choose how you're going to show up. And so, you know, let me talk about the fact that when you use this correctly, it actually brings you closer to people because as a mom, I wrote this book with my daughter, Sawyer, and it was extraordinary to be able to do this with her because we argued over every word and our relationship is one where we love each other. But we just get under each other's skin, you know, like when you get like a really weird, like little splinter under a nail or you have like a rock and a shoe. And it's the tiniest thing and you're like, I can't get we all have relationships like that where you love this person, but why are we always fighting. Why is there always tension, why are we missing this ability to really just get each other and that was us and writing this book together and really irritating the hell out of each other. And saying having to as a mother and daughter because there's nobody more annoying in your life than your mother and there's nobody that you wish you were closer to than your mother. And she feels the same about you. And navigating the very challenging part of the mother daughter relationship where you're now an adult and your mom's an adult. And it's easy to forget that this is your mom's first time being a human being to and your mom did not get all of the things that she needed when she was a little girl. It's not only give you what we have to give and if nobody gave it to us, it's very hard to know how to give it to you. And so a lot of us recognize that we did not do a good job. We did not show up all the time in a calm regulated nervous system. You know, we had to work several jobs because maybe dad walked out on the family. We didn't have financial support. We didn't have a mom, you know, or dad that supported us in the way that we really needed. And so you come to the experience of being a mom as literally a child who's also incomplete. And now we're responsible for this being that we love so much and we get it wrong a lot of the time. And what has happened with the Let them theory that I love so much is that the first time that you start using it and you'll use it with your mom because she's super irritating. Everybody's moms are really irritating. That's how we are. And you also love us. But you're going to start going let her. Just let her just so super annoying and cringy. And oh my god, mom, why just where that let her let her let her. And then what's going to end up happening is as you start to say let her what you're doing is you're accepting who she isn't who she isn't. You're saying let her. And this space opens up between the two of you where you're accepting her and she's feeling accepted instead of judged. And then the Let me heart comes in. Let me decide as the daughter what kind of relationship do I want to have with my mom and let me show up that way and let me be less judging and let me be less critical and let me be a little more understanding. And I don't say any of this to excuse any of the negative things that may have happened in people's childhood. I say this because I think it's very easy to judge and it's a way more important skill in life to take a step back and try to step in someone's shoes. And perhaps understand what this person you've been judging went through what unprocessed stuff they may be dealing with what they didn't get in their childhood. And that doesn't mean that you have to excuse everything that happened. But it does mean through the lens of understanding a wait a minute my mom's never been to therapy my mom's never been able to experience some of the things I have my mom didn't get what she needed. You're dealing with a human being here who is doing the best that they can you know there's this really interesting and incredibly helpful analogy that the pastor TD Jakes shared with Oprah Winfrey and Oprah has had a very open. It's been very open about how challenging her relationship was with her mother and TD Jakes said that there are two kinds of people in life there are 10 gallon people. And there are pint size people. And if you're a 10 gallon person and you need 10 gallons of love and 10 gallons of affirmation and 10 gallons of attention and 10 gallons of attention and you're trying to get those 10 gallons from a pint size capacity person. You will never be satisfied. And when you start to recognize that maybe just maybe you're a 10 gallon person who has been trying to get 10 gallons of something from somebody who only had because of their life experience. A pint to give you here's what's interesting you realize that if they poured a pint into you they gave you everything they had. And yet you experienced it as not enough and you start to understand other people's experiences in life and limitations and you can put it in context for what you deserve and need. And this is true about marriage and it's true about dating and it's true about friendship and the let them theory and writing this book and hearing for millions and millions and millions of people around the world. What has been the most rewarding part of this for me personally in my relationships with family and my marriage and my relationships both as a mother and as a daughter and as a sister and as a friend is understanding that different people have different capacities in terms of what they need. And in terms of what they're able to give and going through life and understanding first and foremost what kind of person are you because there's a lot of people that listen to like well I'm actually like a pint size person when I get like a gallon person it's like gaslighting. Like I only want to give you a pint because that's just I need to be with another pint size person because then we're that's amazing. But if you're starting to recognize wait a minute I'm a 10 gallon person and I bigfoot stomp over everybody because I demand that from everybody and maybe that friend that I'm starting to get annoyed with maybe that friend used to be a 10 gallon person but because of the breakup or because her mom's going through cancer or because her job is incredibly intense she's only got a pint to give me. So why don't I let her and why don't I let me instead of judging her take a step back and say well wait a minute what kind of friend do I want to be why am I being transactional with people why not. not go through life being a little bit more self-aware and a little bit more compassionate. And what's interesting, if you really listen closely is, I'm not excusing anything. I'm recognizing it. And when you recognize the situation you're in, whether it's a relationship to another person or yourself or your job, once you recognize what's happening, you have the ability to choose how you respond. It might mean less time, it might mean more compassion, it might mean forgiveness, it might mean better boundaries. But it's so liberating to not feel like you have to walk around and judge everybody all the time. You can just create the space of acceptance and then choose what you do from there. Yeah, that's such a powerful reframe. I've always thought of it as an empty well because I have a lot of, I've had a lot of empty wells in my life, and I keep going back expecting there to be water, but I love that the reframe of, and maybe it's not empty. It's just very limited. Yeah. And I don't want to take it right back. Yeah. That's why you use the word empty because somebody with a limited capacity right now will never satiate somebody who has a lot of depth and need. And here's what I've gotten to in my life. I don't think either one is right or wrong. I don't think it's better to be a 10 gallon person or a pint person. The super power is recognizing which one you are right now, and then recognizing that other people have bigger and smaller capacities based on their past and based on their present. And when you can really recognize that you just have so much more power, it is so insanely liberating to move through life and do it in a way where all the bullshit around you doesn't impact you. I often think about snow globes, you know those things that we shake, like when somebody in your life is agitated or reactive, just think about them in a snow globe. Right. Yeah. Why does all the dust have to get on you? It doesn't. Just let them. Yeah. Like somebody throwing up, you don't step in front of them. Yeah. Just let them. You might wrap their back from the safe distance, but you're recognizing what's happening. And then you're choosing how to respond. Your boss's mood doesn't have to get in here. And it doesn't have to mean anything about you. Probably doesn't, by the way, because you have no idea what that person's dealing with. Yeah, we take things so personally. I mean, you have so much wisdom because you've walked the walk. And I wish I could have learned it. I wish I could have read a book and just like God, that's what I want to ask you. So knowing what you know now at 57, obviously, is learned through your experiences in life. And I'm sure you're grateful for it and everything. And we were talking behind site. Yeah. Kind of. I wish I could shave the couple decades off. Well, do you think, knowing what you know now at 57, if you had known this, or if somebody had given you this information at 25 or 35, do you think things would have been different or do you think that you had to experience it yourself to get to this place? I had to experience everything that I did in order to learn what I now teach with a level of conviction and passion that I teach it with. And the other thing that's very important about my stories, if I had had this type of success at say, you know, late 20s, 30s, even like early 40s, I would have been a giant bitch and I would have lost it all. No, no, I'll tell you why. Because when you have an experience in life where you almost lose everything that matters to you. And for me, that means my marriage, my home, my sanity, my just ambition, my sense of self, if you are able to climb out of that hole, you don't forget what matters. And so I'm grateful that all of this has happened in my mid 50s. And look, I've been working my tail off for 16 years. You don't get out at $800,000 out of debt overnight. You do that over a decade. That's how long it took me. People like, how'd you get out of debt? I'm like, okay, I worked four jobs for like three years. I didn't buy anything that I wanted and I only paid off bills and then I used that snowball formula that people talk about in terms of the credit cards. And I just did the boring, ruling things that all the experts tell us to do that you don't feel like doing until you start to feel like, oh my gosh, I'm not just thinking about becoming a new person. I'm actually acting like somebody different. And it takes time. Often it takes a lot of time. For me, it took a decade to get out of debt, a decade. And so I'll come back to something I said earlier. If you time travel 10 years and you give it a decade, you will be shocked at the changes you can create in your life. You could launch an EP. You could write a fantasy fiction novel. You could change your career. You could go to medical school and you could even do the post back pre-med program in that amount of time. You could meet the love of your life. You could meet the love of your life and recognize that it's the person staring at you in the mirror. You could fundamentally change who you are, what you believe, what you do for a living, who you're, you can change your mind. You can change anything. And so I am grateful that all of this happened later in life because I know what matters. There is no amount of money. There is no amount of success that changes what's actually important to me and what's actually important to me, number one is me being proud of the person I am right now. Do I move through my day-to-day life in a way where I am clear about my intention? And at the end of the day, I can put my head on the pillow and go, "Mel, you did a good job today." Like you were a good person, you were kind to people, you worked very hard, you apologized when you screwed up, you made choices that were aligned with the things that you care about. You had a good job. That's number one. Number two, my marriage. Number three, my relationship with my kids. Number four, my relationship with my friends, my health, those are the things that matter. And you know, we get so focused on the big thing that we miss the most important thing. You know, a lot of people who feel stuck are like, "I don't know my purpose. I don't know why I'm here." Well, I just want to share my favorite definition of purpose. Purpose is not the thing you do. Purpose is the thing that happens in other people when you do the thing that you do. Your purpose is the impact that you make on other people's lives. As you move through your day, it's the energy you bring because you bring the weather. That's how powerful your energy is. One of the biggest changes you could make right now is thinking about your energy and how influential it is because that's the legacy that you have. It's not what you're doing. It's how you're making people feel as you're doing it. Your reputation is not the stuff you're saying. It's what people say about you when you're not there. And people say really incredible things about you when you move through life in a way that you've made other people feel good and seen and supported in their lives. That's the secret. And any of us can tap into it starting today. Yeah. So powerful. Okay. We have one minute. Right? Okay. No pressure. No pressure. We're going to play a rapid fire round of let them or let me. Oh, great. Okay. There's going to be nuance to this. Okay. But we're going to fly through these. Your friends take a trip and don't invite you. Let them. You're good. Okay. Someone you love doesn't approve of your relationship. Let them. Your partner is in a bad mood and won't tell you why. Let him. A friend never initiates plans. Let me initiate plans. Love that. Someone leaves you a hate comment or message. Let them because why would you spend any of your precious energy defending yourself to somebody who is intent on misunderstanding you? Why would you spend any time defending the truth to people who lie about you? Your time and energy is so valuable, pour it into the positive thing that you want to be doing in the world. Do not waste it on these idiots who are intent on being negative, lying, misunderstanding you. It is a waste of your time. And that's exactly what they want you to do by the way. Let them. Let them. True. Your family thinks your career choice is ridiculous. Let them because your family is not supposed to understand your career. Because if they wanted that career, they'd be pursuing it. True. Your partner has a habit or does something you've asked them to repeatedly change. Let me go to therapy with this person and see what the real issue is. You're watching someone you love make what you think is a terrible decision. This is the hardest one. Let them. Let me stand by and offer support, but let me understand that people only change when the ready. to change for themselves and the hardest thing in the world is to see a slow motion train crash about to happen. And what I've learned the hard way is the more I step in and try to rescue someone, the more they drown. And there's a certain amount of pain that people need in their lives in order to decide that they're ready to do the very hard work to change their lives. And so you need to let people have the dignity of their own experience while also letting them know that you're always there to support when they're ready to do the work to change. That's very beautifully articulated. Someone blatantly steals your idea and executes it before you do. Let them. And then let me hire a lawyer. Not from experience, right? But here's the thing. Here's the thing. I do feel like, you know, in life that, you know, there's nobody's ever going to do an idea the way that you're going to do it. True. He talks about saying there's a million books to write and publish. There's a million podcasts to launch. And so maybe it's inspiration. Maybe it's something else. And you've got to stay laser focused on what you're doing. Okay. Two more. You over here is someone saying something about you that's completely and true. That's kind of similar to depends on the circumstances. You've got to let them because they just said it and then let me decide how to respond. You've explained your boundary three times and they keep crossing it. Let me understand who I'm dealing with and let me not deal with this person anymore because they're showing me disrespect. My boundaries are not for them. Your boundaries are for you. Boundaries are for you because you can't hold somebody accountable to your boundary. Boundaries reveal who crosses them. And then you've got to take that information and not actually have them in your life. That was it. You're so good at that game. You know your shit. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Tell everybody where they can find you. I'm sorry. I'm just getting up. Okay. No. That was it. Okay. Tell everyone where they can find you. I'm sorry. You can find me right here on this podcast. Amazing. Thank you so much, mom. And by the way, the single best thing to buy your family this year for the holidays is the Let them theory book. Nothing gives me greater joy than seeing families reading it together because it teaches you how to love people you hate sometimes, and it creates space for all of you to be yourselves. And it really will make you and everybody in your family who reads it way more supportive of one another. Like that's the most beautiful outcome of this book is seeing how it has healed families. It has brought people closer together. It has created understanding and better boundaries and that's that I can't even find the words to talk about how meaningful that is. Yeah. Well, you've made a massive impact. So keep doing what you're doing. Thank you. Amazing. Thank you. Great job. I hope you enjoyed that episode, if you liked the episode and if you liked the show in general, please take a second to rate review and subscribe. It goes such a long way in supporting the show. Follow the show over on Instagram at well dot pod. You can also follow my personal Instagram at Ariel Lori. I'm always sharing great clips from the episodes. We also have full episodes on YouTube as well if you want to watch in entirety. Thanks for listening. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.