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In any year of your life where you feel stuck, you know what you need to do to move the needle, to change your career, to improve your health, to work on your marriage.
The information is everywhere.
And in fact, if you're listening to me right now and you go, Mel Robbins, you are wrong.
I have no idea what to do.
I just know I'm stuck.
Go to Google and type in, I hate my job, and you will get hundreds of millions of links.
You will probably find a hundred thousand videos that are made by people who have been stuck in their jobs who will walk you through a step-by-step process that you could take in order to change.
The what is easy.
The issue is how.
How do you make yourself take actions when you're afraid, when you're scared, when you're overwhelmed?
How do you break bad habits?
How do you break the negative thinking that is causing you to feel paralyzed?
See, the problem for most of us is we to change your life or change your career or change your health is to take action.
And so the reason why so many people get stopped by procrastination and stopped by fear and stopped by anxiety is because they never get past the part of just thinking about it.
And I believe that we all have a habit that I call the habit of hesitation.
And in psychology, psychologists and researchers say there's basically two types of people, right?
There's people that have a bias towards action.
And those are the kinds of folks that when inspiration strikes or when confidence strikes or when courage strikes or when opportunity strikes, they tend to lean toward it and to take action.
And based on research, those folks tend to be happier, healthier, more successful, more fulfilled in life.
And then there's the rest of us.
And those of us that have what psychologists call a bias towards thinking, which means in a moment of uncertainty, a moment of opportunity, a moment where you need courage or confidence, instead of leaning toward it, you lean away from it and you start thinking, what should I do?
And it's that habit of hesitating in moments of change that is keeping you stuck.
We call it procrastination.
We call it overthinking.
We call it a lot of things, but it's just a habit of pausing.
And then you trip into patterns of I mean, people say information is power.
And based upon what you're saying there, and I actually agree with this, information is not everything, is it?
Like we can have the information, we can have the knowledge, you know, knowledge is power.
It is, but it's not everything, is it?
You can have the knowledge and not take action.
I know a lot of really smart people that are miserable.
I know a ton of people that do nothing but read self-help books or watch videos on YouTube about inspiration and do nothing.
And the reason why is they gather information as a way to feel like you're working on something.
And learning is a really important thing to do.
Like understanding, becoming more self-aware, it's critical to you improving your life.
It's critical to you being happier and more fulfilled.
If you don't understand yourself and you don't understand the patterns of thinking, the patterns of behavior that are and replace them.
But you can get yourself comfortable with learning and duping yourself into thinking that somehow being smarter about what you need to do to be healthy will make you healthy.
That's not true.
Just like reading about launching a business doesn't launch a business.
And so, you know, one of the other things that I find to be really interesting, and I think this one of the reasons why people really resonate with a lot of what I have to say.
I don't know if it's the dyslexia, the ADHD, what it is, but I can't remember a lot of information in terms of a list.
So if I'm trying to get healthy and you give me 11 things to do, I will do none of them.
If you give me one simple thing that I can grab onto, I will likely try it.
And I think a lot of times what happens for folks is, and I know it certainly has happened for me, is that even if the information is empowering, if it feels complicated, I'm not going to do it.
Yeah.
That's the beauty or one of the beauties, I'd say, of your approach, whether it's in your, you know, you've written multiple books, but the one before this, and including this one, The High Five Habits, you know, the subtitle, I think, says all take control of your life with one simple habit.
And as you talk, Mel, I really, I can't tell you how much I connect with what you're saying, because it's a, it's very similar to the approach I've tried to take with patients for over 20 years now is keep it simple.
You know, what is that one keystone habit that's the door to all those other habits?
Before we get into the new book, I have a new team member.
And she's a huge fan of yours.
Okay.
And last night, I said to her, hey, so I've got Mel coming to the studio, she was losing it with excitement.
And she said, Mel Robbins changed my life.
If it wasn't for Mel, I'd still be in a job that was stressing me out.
So I couldn't stand anymore.
If it wasn't for Mel, I'd still be on antidepressants.
If it wasn't for Mel's 5-4-3-2-1 rule, I wouldn't have pressed send on the application to join your team, Rangan.
And she only joined a few weeks ago.
And that just really hit me at how profound and how life changing your work is, because this is one individual who has shared how it's helped her health, it's helped her, well, it's helped her physical health, her mental well being.
And it's helped her to get a job, which as she said to me last night, has pushed her out of the comfort zone that she knew she could do, but probably wouldn't have had the courage to go for.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for sharing that.
And there's a couple things that I want to say about that.
That story does a beautiful job of explaining my mission in the world.
And that is to uncover simple tools that anybody can use to help them make changes in their life.
And so the reason why...
What's her name?
Her name's Steph.
So the reason why Steph was so excited, and I hear it every day, like one of the coolest things about being on YouTube and being on social media and putting work out and speaking on stages around the world is when you have a super simple idea, it's so sticky that anybody can share it.
It sounds kind of stupid that count backwards.
Okay.
You're not going to forget that because it and the idea itself is so simple and so sticky.
Anybody can try it and anybody can share it.
And oftentimes people don't even know my name.
They're like, oh my gosh, you're the five lady or Robin.
They don't even...
They've been watching me.
And I love that because for me, it's about the tools.
And in Steph's case, what's super interesting about her excitement, because I literally cannot go through a day at this point and have somebody not walk up to me and say, you changed my life.
And I always say the exact same thing when somebody tells me that.
I say, thank you so much for telling me.
I appreciate you acknowledging me and following me, but you deserve the credit because you did the work.
I just gave you a tool that I happened to discover that helps you move from thinking to doing.
So she moved herself from thinking about how much she hated her job to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, stopping the thinking by counting backwards and pushing herself to move.
She moved herself from thinking about applying for the dream job of yours and 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, hitting send.
She moved herself from thinking about going to the gym to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, cutting the procrastination loop in half and then replacing it with a push to take action.
And so what's so elegant and simple and empowering about the five second rule or the high five habit or all the other simplistic stuff that I tend to share with the world, because that's the stuff that works for me, is that these are all tools that cut through the bullshit holding you back.
And it just so happens that your nerdy friend Mel has done all the research to be able to explain to you why science and research and decades of psychological academic work actually is encapsulated by counting backwards 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, or in this particular new brain hack, the high five habit, how simply high-fiving the human being you see in the mirror every single morning as part of your self-encouragement, self-love, like this is powerful stuff.
Hey, it's Mel.
Thank you so much for being here.
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I love you.
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