Daily Motivations - FOCUS ON WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

If you don't believe in YOU first, then nobody else will. It's on YOU to look deep inside yourself, and find the strength and courage required to make a real change in your life.  If you don't like your life right now, it's on YOU to change it, and nobody is coming to save you. In this powerful, life-changing motivational speech by Mel Robbins, she shares insights into how to change your life, overcome negative thinking, and finally become the person you were meant to be.   Speakers:Mel RobbinsInstagram- Daily_motivationsorgFacebook- @daily_motivationsorgSupport us PayPal

If you want your life to turn around, it's your job to do it. If you want to pay off your bills, it's your job to do it. If you want to change where you're at in life, it is your job to change it. And I had wasted way too much time blaming Chris or thinking life was unfair and it was unfair or beating myself up about the stupid decisions that we had both made, feeling shit. shitty about myself because I couldn't get out of bed or I knew I was isolating. I was letting my health go. I was drinking too much. Like I was in that self-sabotaging loop for years. And then finally, it's like, okay, and, and, okay, you can continue to lay in bed and rot away. You can continue to beat the shit out of yourself. You can continue to tell yourself that it's too late, screwed up. You're

never going to get out of debt. You're never going to figure this out. You're 41. Your career is over. You know, you're going to have to get rid of this. You can do all that, Mel. Or you can change. Like, if you want to, if you want things in your life to get better, prove it. And the person you're proving it to is yourself. If I wanted it to be fixed, I needed to shut up and do something. And that was the moment. For me, that moment of just desperation. and honesty with self that started to change everything. That's how you become the person you want to be. If you're not willing to do it for 10 years, don't even bother.

Because that's how long it takes. There is no shortcut. There is no secret. There's no, like, fast thing I can give you. I can tell you that if you don't like where your life is right now or what it feels like, that's all you need to change. If you don't like some aspect of your life, my job just doesn't feel the way I wanted to feel anymore.

This relationship doesn't feel the way I wanted to. Okay, great. You can change anything from that moment of honesty with yourself. That's what it takes. Your life changes with one decision because the decision points you in a different direction. And so for me, you know, there's no magic trick. I just found simple and sometimes dumb tools

that helped me push through my own excuses so I could take the actions. that I needed to take even when I didn't feel like it. And that's the secret. I wasted too much of my life waiting to feel motivated, waiting to feel ready.

Your brain is not wired to do shit that's easy. If it were, we'd all have a million dollars in six-pack abs and the most fabulous merit. That's not what life. Your brain is wired to move toward what feels good and away from what feels bad. And change feels horrible.

I would have probably had results faster if I had not been so hard on myself. It is very difficult to be motivated when, in terms of like, continuing to keep going and the intrinsic motivation because you start to feel good that you're acting like the person that you want to be, when you have a chip on your shoulder and you're constantly, well, okay, but you could have done this. Oh, okay, great that you're working two jobs, but you better get a third. and the power, it sounds so cheesy, but the power of learning how to change the settings

in your mind so that you 10x on the things that are going well, and you call out good job on that. Good job on that. I'm proud of you for getting two jobs. You're doing enough today. Like, you're doing a lot, actually. there's something about shifting that tough love mentality with yourself once you kind of have that first breakthrough and becoming more of an encourager. And I think this is true about business too. You know, if you are a person that wants to be a great leader, stop focusing on the things that are going wrong and triple down on what you see people doing well.

Because you don't realize people do like a hundred things great every day. But we personally hyper fixate on the one thing that didn't go well as if it's the only thing that you did today and you forget, you answered 73 emails. Great job. You showed up for those seven Zoom meetings that were a waste of your time. Great job. You were kind to the person that was having a really hard day.

Good job. You managed your energy well. And instead of coming home and just dumping your, your stress on everybody and then blaming work for it, treating the people that you care the most, the worst, you checked yourself at the door. Good job. Yeah, you might not have gotten that thing. You may have like had a lousy tone of voice with that person, but you, you apologize pretty quickly. Good job. Like when you can start to notice the things you're doing well, it creates this unbelievable sense of momentum inside of you.

And I think a lot about the outcome that I am driving toward and what I'm doing and why. And that becomes a directional signal that I can point toward. because I feel like I'm a person that has ruthless compassion. Like I have the highest standards in the world for myself. I demand a level of excellence, which does not mean perfectionism. It means showing up to the best of my capability today. And, you know, if I'm on a day where I can only give 40%, and I gave 40%, I, I actually I actually operated with excellence.

It takes a level of self-awareness and self-control to be able to check your own energy and not make your stress somebody else's. It is such a simple construct when you really start to apply it because the four words, whether you're talking about moments when you say let them, you're just queuing to yourself,

moments where the outside world or other people, whether it's their opinions, their moods, their stress, their behavior, their expectations, their emotions, where they are penetrating your brain space or they're penetrating your stress levels. That's all that it is. When you say let them, you are recognizing that you're in a moment where something outside of your control is frustrating you or stressing you out. And you are queuing yourself to, you are queuing yourself to, to not allow something outside of you to hold that much power over you. And when you say, let me, you remind yourself that there's, in life, there's only three things you got.

That's it. It's what you think about what's happening. And that's the settings in your mind that we keep coming back to. It's what you do or don't do in response to it. And it is your, the skill that you can develop of knowing that when those emotions, the chemical explosions in your body that you will never be able to control, when those emotions fire off, do you have the skill to let them rise and fall and then choose intentionally how you're going to respond? Or do those emotions run you over? When I say let them, whether it's about traffic or it's a business deal that blows up or somebody's rude behavior, I'm not allowing anything to happen. I'm recognizing what's happened.

It's very big difference. And then when I say let me, I remind myself, I always have a choice. And it goes back to everything we've talked about. I have a choice about how I respond to what's happening. I have a choice about what I do or don't do. And what I've noticed is that I often don't do anything. If you're an overreactor like I used to be, if you're a control freak,

your automatic response will be to erupt or to send the email or to say something out of emotion or to try to control the wrong thing, which only makes you feel more out of control. And there's just such an easier, more powerful, more peaceful, more effective, way to go about life. But when you learn how to truly take responsibility for your life,

and I love the word responsibility because it's just the ability to respond, it's amazing how much more time and energy you have. I didn't realize how I was spending all my time and energy on the stupidest things. I was allowing people that didn't need to or deserve to have space to my mind to take up a ton of space. But I didn't know how to get them out of there. I didn't know how to protect myself from the very real stressors in life so that I could conserve my energy and my time

for the way I wanted to respond to it or not. You have to do that for yourself. Jealousy is one of the most powerful directional signals on the planet, planet. because you're only jealous of people that are doing things or have things that you actually want. It's impossible to be fake jealous. Whatever you're jealous of is hitting something deeply personal. Fucking pay attention to it.

Instead of stewing in it, go, oh, flip it. How could I take those things that I'm really now really inspired by and take action? and go get them in my life. Because the thing about jealousy is, it's just your inspiration that's blocked. Most folks know what they dream about and what they want. And yet, they're spending all of their time and energy arguing against what they want.

And so you can have all these epiphanies. I hope that when somebody listens to our people, conversation and watches this, that they have a massive aha moment. But it's not going to mean if you don't take action and do something about it. The aha moment is the door that opens. But your new life does not begin unless you fucking step through the door. I keep going. I am saying I believe in myself. Taring yourself down over the shit that you've done, it's not going to empower you to change the patterns that are keeping you stuck. Stop. People will cheer for you and me. They won't cheer for themselves. I'm the same way. The point of the story is it's so easy to see

what somebody else should do. It's so easy to cheer for somebody else. We all do that, right? We cheer for our favorite sports teams. We follow our favorite influencers and authors. We plan birthday parties for our friends. We take on extra work from our colleagues. We support everyone around us. We do not know how to do it for ourselves. The most motivating force in the world on the planet based on research, hands down, is empowerment, encouragement, support, and celebration. And for our entire lives, we have outsourced that to somebody else. Somebody else.

And that moment in the mirror every morning could be a profound moment where you lift yourself up and you check back in with your intention. What I've discovered that is heartbreaking is the average person cannot celebrate themselves. I'm going to ask everybody who's watching this to tomorrow morning, stand in front of the mirror, we're going to unpack this whole thing and try to high-five yourself.

You can't raise your hand to your own reflection without now grounding yourself in the moment. Instead of going, I got this, let's go. and high-fiving yourself to step forward, most of us go, I don't know if I'm worth it. I don't know if right now is the right time to do this. I don't think I'm good enough.

I failed so many times I can't go through that door. And that's the problem I want to attack right now, that there is somewhere in your life that you know what you want. You can feel it pulling you. And you are actively arguing against it. You're bringing yourself down. You're beating yourself down.

out. And so this Uber driver, I get into the car and we start driving and I'm on the phone as we're driving and I'm having a conversation with somebody about this daytime talk show that I launched, which was a dream with Sony Pictures Television and then was promptly fired after season one. It was a huge fucking failure because we didn't make it to season two. Huge failure in real world terms. Massive success when it comes to the timeline of my life. And so I'm talking to this person about the talk show. I hang up the phone and this Uber driver comes alive. He's like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're in my cab.

And I'm like, why? And he says, because I want to talk to you about something. I think you can help me. And I'm like, great, how can I help you? And he says, I have a dream of being a Oscar winning actor and creating opportunities for other black and Latino men to do the same in acting. And I'm like, freaking fantastic. What the fuck are you doing in that? Dallas, right? You know, the guy's 25. And so I go, you know, the game is in New York and L.A.

I mean, sure, you can act, you can write stuff, you can be here in Dallas, but why are you not in L.A.? Why are you not in New York? And he's like, you're right, you're right, you're right. I need to move to L.A. Like, why not? And he says, I have $700 in my bank account. And I'm like, that's freaking fantastic. You have $700 in a car? Dude, drop me off and get driving. What are you waiting for? And so we have this whole conversation, and I write about it in this book, where I am actively arguing for his dream. And he is actively arguing against his dream. And what is so sad is throughout this conversation, Tom, he's like, you're right, $700 could get me there.

You're right. I am only 25. You're right. If I keep thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking about what I want to be doing, I'm not, only going to drive in circles, my whole life is going to spin in circles as I think about what I want and I don't do shit about it. And then you are going to find yourself not at 25, but at 45 or 65 and you're going to be so filled with regret that you never fucking put a bet on yourself. And so this conversation ends with him declaring that he's going to go to California and me giving him a bunch of tools that I talk about in this book. The point of the story is it's so

easy to see what somebody else should do. It's so easy to cheer for somebody else. We do not know how to do it for ourselves. When somebody high fives you, you feel seen, you feel heard, and you feel like somebody has acknowledged you for the unique person that you are. One of the biggest objections that people had to standing in front of the media, take a moment, look at yourself, and then raise your hand. As people said, over and over and over again, I haven't done anything worthy of high-fiving. High-fiving feels like a celebration.

I don't have the number on the scale that I want. I don't like my bank account. I don't enjoy what I do for a living. I've made a shitload of mistakes. I'm struggling with trauma. I don't have anything to celebrate. And what I realized is people are making a fundamental mistake. You are withholding the very support, empowerment, and celebration that you need to change and to do the hard work and to face the things that you're scared of.

And that's why you're not changing. Because if you can't stand in front of the mirror and raise your hand and high five yourself just because you, you got your ass out of bed and you're breathing, you will never get what you want life. Is the negative shit you're saying and the support that you're withholding helping you feel better? If it's not, try this. Try celebrating yourself five days in a row.

Literally, try starting your day by waking up and raising your hand and high-fiving yourself in the mirror just because you're breathing. So if you just are like, I'm doing the best I can. That's pretty empowering if you think about it. Or I can learn from this. Or this is temporary. I'll be okay.

Those sorts of things are little ways to high-five your mind instead of again going low. You got a choice. Do you take yourself down or do you lift yourself up? That's where it begins. It begins with you. Begins with you.