Modern Wisdom - #1027 - Mel Robbins - The Secret to Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Mel Robbins is a motivational speaker, podcast host and author. If motivation can’t be trusted, what should you rely on instead? Bestselling author and top podcaster Mel Robbins explains why discipline and emotional control are the real keys to success, and how to build the mindset needed to follow through when it counts. Expect to learn why we cling to control even when we know it makes us miserable and why we focus on things we can't control, how to better deal with the judgment of others, where self-compassion comes from, how to get a grip on your anxiety and ADHD, what "Let Them" theory means and how to employ it, where self-compassion actually comes from and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 Welcome Kit, and more when you first subscribe at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yeah, so Keynesian Beauty Contest, people are asked to rank who is the most beautiful, but they're also then asked to rank who they think other people think is the most beautiful. Yes, and then is that also the thing where you're then told that the stuff is screwed up and you're seeing the data and then you come back and you rank the same people differently because you were shown how other people are like it. Oh, maybe there might be a twist on it. So this guy's actually done it, but he's done it for the real life. So he basically has the most incredible data set that shows that,

that people agree on 88% of the things that are important in life. Now, we may disagree on policy and how to get there, but people want exactly the same things. And right now we're in this massive moment of collective self-silencing. And part of the reason why, and it's super fascinating when he talks about the brain, since we're so wired for connection and social rejection feels like pain,

that when you see that I don't know what the stats are today because it's an old study, but you're probably familiar with that study that looked at Twitter and how, I think it was like 80 or 90% of the content

came from 10% of the accounts. And right now, if you look at what's going on in social, the 5% of the most extreme voices on both sides dominate 90% of the conversation. And everybody else

is sort of in the middle going, can my fucking parents just stop screaming at each other? And everybody is self-silencing because nobody wants to get into it with anybody, and we are under the collective illusion that because you're not saying something, you agree with what's happening. And his data is so important and so hopeful and meaningful. And then he has this incredible historical example about the Velvet Revolution that happened, which was the revolution that happened, I believe, in the, 80s, it's the only time a communist government was overthrown without a single bullet being fired

or a single person dying. And there's an 80-page free kind of historical paper about it. It all began with somebody writing a play that basically started to poke fun, but just subtle enough, so that the communist, you know, regime did not see it coming that had people in the audience laughing and going, this is ridiculous. And then that invited people to step back into their lives in a more authentic way. So I think he's one of the most important people

that I have interviewed in terms of the state of the world right now and giving people a research backgrounding to be able to start to speak openly again and to be more authentic in terms of how, they're communicating and in the hope that I believe we all need right now.

Suggests that the intervention should be quite simple because people don't fundamentally disagree. If they fundamentally disagreed, that would be a much higher hurdle to get over. The fact is we do agree, but we are worried about what other people will think of us. Will my side cast me out because I say a thing that is inconvenient to the message that is, will the other side see me as an unreliable ally to my own and I'm a vector of weakness into the chink of the armor, et cetera, et cetera. God, you're very intellectual. Yes.

Thank you. I mean, actually, that might not be a compliment. No, it is. No, it is that. And I think it goes deeper than that. So when I really look at what I think is this undercurrent of every single issue that is going on right now collectively and individually, do you remember when we were in the pandemic and the experts that study, whether it's psychology or its health or its human behavior or its physiology, we're saying we're not going to know the impact of this quarantine and this sustained level of threat and

anxiety, we're not going to know the long-tail impact of this for a while. And what I believe part of what we're seeing now is we're seeing the impact of human beings being put in to a state of chronic stress where your amygdala is the thing that's run in the show, and whether you realize it or not, you are quietly on edge, so you're

like a car at a stoplight and the engine is revving. And it's because it got turned on during the pandemic and quarantine, and we are not built to sustain that much uncertainty for that extended of an amount of time in work and life.

I don't think we also understand. how much grief there was to process. You know, if you're a high school student and you miss graduation or the prom, for us, like for somebody like me who's 57, you're kind of like, ah, get over it, for God's sakes. You know, it's not that big of a deal. But if you're 18,

you've been looking forward to that for probably 10 years. And so to minimize the grief and to bury it down, I think what you're seeing now in terms of the inability to focus, the rise in anxiety, the fact that there are so many people

that just feel this tremendous sense of discouragement and this inability to double down on their capacity to manage through it or to support themselves through it or have their own back through it. I personally believe it goes deeper. And it's that first you have to understand that you are probably one of the 80% of people that Dr. Aditi Nurakar from Harvard, who's one of the world's leading experts on stress in terms of the stress and medical physiology of it, She believes based on her research that 83% of adults in America are in a state of chronic stress right now, and they don't even know it. And your body doesn't automatically reset. You have to do that for yourself. And so if you really take that into account, and I believe this is true, that everybody that you're bumping into right now, the amygdala is running the show. They're bracing, whether they realize it or not. And the research is very clear. that when you are in that state, and I feel like I lived most of my life in that state and didn't realize it. If you're in that state, there's also a tremendous amount of research

or some fascinating research out of UCLA about how when the amygdala is engaged, you cannot bring the full functioning of your prefrontal cortex to bear. So if you're wondering, why are people more irrational? Why are people root or why are people isolating? Why are people more anxious? There's lots of reasons on the surface,

but individually, one of the things to understand, is that you may be one of those people like I used to be, and the majority of us used to be, that you're medically speaking in a state of stress, and that is a baseline issue that is compounding everything. 90% of anxiety is anticipatory, not about events, but about control over them. And this link between uncertainty and anxiety being intrinsically related is so true. There's this wonderful idea called compensatory control. What does it call?

Compensatory control. Compensatory control. I'm going to speak in a language that you may not be familiar with, British. My husband went to high school in Britain. Okay, good. Did he retain? No, I just don't understand the big words. Compensatory control.

Yeah, to compensate. Oh, compensate. Okay. Compensatory control. Okay, got it. When people were told to imagine an uncertain medical diagnosis, they were more likely to see patterns in. meaningless static on a TV.

Really? So basically, if you have a sense of threat coming from the outside, if you feel like control and uncertainty are very common in your life, you are more likely to construct narratives and personify and create archetype and believe in conspiracy and attach meaning where it's not there. This is from Matthew Syed. It was in the Times forever ago. It was actually around COVID.

And he basically made this point that this is before Lablich hypothesis, this stuff was, you know, supported or disproven or anything. It was just a notion at the time. And what you basically said was it is far easier to believe that the release of some global pandemic is the plan of a maligned scientist than it is the chance mutation of a silly little micro because at least if it's a scientist, we understand there's motivation and there's desire and it feels like it's within our realm. Yes.

And I think for many people, the... What feels like control in life is actually just a reminder of how little control we have, right? Because we have the illusion of control. I can tell you what the weather is going to be in Tampa, Florida tomorrow, within a pretty tight timeline. If a nuclear bomb went off in Russia tomorrow, Saabox would open in Austin, Texas. Right. Okay, so I have acute predictability, but I have long-term chaos. Yes.

And trying to match these two, trying to work out, well, we've always not had control over the things that we haven't had control over, but never before have we had such an illusion that we might be able to have control over them. We've got this illusion of mastery. Well, the modern world, I can message anybody on the planet immediately. I can consume the entire world's news, 24 hours a day, directly streamed into my face. So maybe I should have more control than I do, and it's blurred the lines. I think it's made distinguishing what we should let go of and what we should try and have agency over. Those lines have become more blood than ever before.

And I think that uncertainty about the future combined with the sense that I might be able to get some sort of a change enacted if I push, I think that those two worlds blending together has made it very difficult for people. I think that's where the anxiety might be coming from. Well, one of the things that's interesting about anxiety, having been somebody that has not has struggled with it for most of my life and not understood it and not understood what to do in those moments and probably made every single mistake personally to make it worse

and also being a mom who had kids who had anxiety and making every single mistake you could make. So I am personally responsible. You've got skin in the game. Not only skin in the game, dude, I have bruises and broken bones when it comes to this game because I have fucked it up. Because I didn't know. I didn't know. And if you're somebody that has really struggled with anxiety and you then have somebody around you that's anxious, it then makes you anxious. And I can see now in hindsight all of the things that I did wrong. This is why I pay gladly for my children to go to therapy, adult children, because I'm like, I fucked you up in so many ways and I didn't allow me to compensate. Yeah, well, let me support you in identifying the things that don't work

and let me support you in working with somebody who can help you change the settings in your mind and who can help you understand when life triggers you because it's going to. But to that point an anxiety that I want to talk about. I actually believe now that anxiety, if you can simplify what is happening in the moment, it will help you apply what every expert tells you you have to do. Because the world is so overwhelming right now, whether you're talking about the world at large and AI coming or the headlines that are distressing, or you're talking about the issues going on in your life, whether you are struggling to pay your bills, or you're scared about the rising cost of living, or maybe you have somebody in your life that's struggling

and you don't know how to help them. And any one of these things can cause you in this present moment to start to feel anxious about what's going to happen. And so in that moment, God, I wish I knew this. I wish I knew this decades ago. I wish that decades ago, Somebody could have explained to me that any time you feel that alarm going off, because that's what anxiety is. It's just an alarm system in your body that is designed to wake your ass up in this moment, either because there's something that you care about that you need to do. So it's coming online as an alarm to wake up your body and your brain to help you perform. That's one type of anxiety, like performance anxiety that a lot of people get. Or you have the kind of more nagging chronic anxiety, which is what I had, which is this nagging

sense that something is about to happen. And you then have this moment where you separate from your own ability to handle it. Like, I love Dr. Russell Kennedy's work. I love Russell. Yes. And, yes. And the fact that he says that all anxiety is separation anxiety. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about?

It's not separate. I'm a grown-ass woman. I'm not separation anxiety. My son, you know, is not, I have separation anxiety. He's like, it's not separation from another person. It's separation from self. Because, you know, if you've got a situation, let's just take, for example, you know, something that I'm seeing, and you're probably seeing this too, from a global fan base.

around the world feeling incredibly anxious about AI, incredibly anxious about whether or not they're going to lose their job, incredibly anxious about the changes that it's going to have in the world. First of all, that's a normal thing to feel because it is completely out of your control if you get fired or not. It's completely out of your control if your job's redundant or not. It's completely out of your control how this is all going to play out. And so in the moment where you feel this alarm going off, what happened in that moment

is you started to go, what if this happens? What if that happened? Oh my God. You separated from the one thing you can't control, which is your response to it. And so instead of going up here

and going, what if this, what if that, what if the other thing, which only makes the alarm that you're feeling worse because when you go up here, you now double down on doubting your ability

to handle it. And so in that moment, if you could take a break, and drop back into your body and into the moment, go, wait a minute. Okay, so I don't know what's going to happen with AI. I don't know, you know, what's going to happen with the state of the world. But here's what I do know. I know that through my attitude, my actions, I can handle it. I know that even though I don't know what's going to happen or what if this or what if that, I can also say, what if it works out? What if something bad happens? And, you know,

I surprise myself and I'm able to just digger it out as much as it may suck. When you start to drop back in and double down on the truth, and the truth is you can through your attitude and through the actions that you take, you can handle even terrible things that happen. It doesn't mean you deserve it. It doesn't mean that it's not going to be terrible. But doubling down on your capacity is what will quiet the alarm, and it is what will retrain you to know that in those moments, because those moments are coming, and they're there for all of us, in those moments when life really overwhelms you, there's nothing you can do about life, but there's so much you can do to support yourself through it. And, you know, what I can now see, if you look

at somebody like David Ross-Maron, professor at Harvard Medical School, and he's also the one that has all the, I think they're called the anxiety centers. They're all over the U.S. He said the single thing that people do wrong with anxiety is the moment you have that separation, oh, God, what if this, and I can't handle it? Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. And then you let's send yourself into a state of complete panic, you freeze, and now you avoid the thing you're scared of. So most people right now, if you're worried about your job, I guarantee you, you know what they're doing? You're probably doing what Mel Robbins used to do.

You're bitching to your friends. You're worrying about it. You're frozen about it. You're pissed off about it. But you know what you're not doing? You're not doing the one thing that you can do, which is fucking update your resume, learn new skills if you're scared about it, lean into it. Ask yourself, do I even like what I do?

Maybe now is a time to tighten the belt and cut back on all the spending I don't need so that I can create a longer runaway and figure out what changes I want to make. Because you're not stuck in the job. You're not stuck where you are. At any moment, you can fucking change. But if you do what I used to do, which is separate from your power to change, and separate from your ability to change your attitude or to learn from somebody like you or to get the support that you need,

then you're going to trigger a bigger alarm and you're going to become the single biggest reason why you stay stuck. And it's in these moments, in these moments where life overwhelms you. That's the mistake I made for years. And then the mistake I made as a parent? Oh, Jesus.

My kid would be overwhelmed and, you know, as a mom, you're like, okay, no problem. You can do a sleep under, not a sleepover. Oh, no problem. You can sleep on the floor of our bedroom for six months since you're scared to be in your room. You know what I'm signaling as a parent? I'm signaling, I'm signaling I don't think you can handle it. Yeah. And so you should be scared because I'm showing you that I don't think you can handle it. A quick aside, you've probably heard experts like Dr. Ronda Patrick talk about the benefits of omega-3s.

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A check-out. You know what my favorite definition of safety is? No. What is it? You will be okay no matter what happens. Hmm. The difference between safety, I never have to face anything.

I love that. I love that. I never have to be in an unsafe situation. No, those are going to come. Yeah, and some of these things are actually going to be out. Outside of your existing experience, the territory that you've mapped in the past is not going to contain how much shit you need to eat today. You're going to eat more shit than you have ever eaten before in your life, and that is going to continue to happen.

And you will be okay, no matter what happens. Now, the reason I love that sentence as well is, I will be okay no matter what happens, can be truncated down. I will be okay no matter what I will be okay no matter and I will be okay I will be okay no matter what happens and I love that the title of your next book it should be ha ha ha maybe let me tell you it was um I did a retreat with a guy called Joe Hudson he's Sam Altman's coach he is the head of human performance at Open AI he is many people have the word coach right and it's a term which is laden with all kinds of ick and slime and barnacles and stuff um he dr k healthy gamer love him um those are two there's

maybe more but those are two that come to mind of people who actually deserve the title of master coach anyway i did a retreat with him in sonoma county 12 hours a day seven days deep emotional work all sober just alone uh me and 11 other people was it all dudes uh no no half and half. Okay. And did you know everybody going in? No, no one knew anyone. A few people knew me and my work. And we had to set an intention. Now, what made you want to do that? Joe said it would be good for me and I trust Joe. Okay. And what was the intention you set? The start of the week, I hope I'm not breaking the container too much by doing this. I've kept most of the stuff that I did that kind of sort of divine and sacred as best I can. But I feel like

this intention is so scalable that it makes sense. And I had, I had, I had, such anxiety, not anxiety, but I had such uncertainty about whether I'd chosen a big enough intention. So other people had had stuff to do with to experience all of God or to live fully and these sort of artistic and beautiful. And mine seemed so kind of like petty and small in comparison or fear-based. And it just, I'd thought and thought and thought and this one came to me and we workshoped it a little as we went around the group. Mine was to know that I will be okay no matter what happens. We got rid of the to know and that. And it's just I will be okay no matter what happens. And it became, it still is my favorite definition of safety that

things will happen and you will eat shit in manners that you have never had to before. Metric tons of it that are bigger and greater and more horrible and scary than you've ever done in the past. But you can handle it. And yeah, I will be okay no matter what happens is just a wonderful definition of safety and I think is played into with what you're talking about with your life, with your kids. Yeah, this thing's going to hurt. And yeah, sleeping alone in the room is scary. But by encouraging them or by denying them the coping mechanism to flee from that, you reinforce to them, you will be okay no matter what happens. You can handle this. You are robust enough. You can deal with this. And that, like,

Exposure therapy to something which is scary and difficult over time, I think. It expands people's capacities to do this. Can I double down on this, though, saying? Yeah, me, yeah. And I'm going to tell you why. It's a tool. And that's why I love what you just said. And I see immediately so much research.

You know, you're referring to Dr. K. You're referring, you know, to other people. I just was speaking with Dr. Aaliyah Krum from Stanford, who is this researcher that did the famous milkshake study that proves that the settings in your mind change the biology in your body. Right. If you believe that it's a high calorie milkshake. Have you seen the most recent one that's just come out about gluten? No. Put a pin in your thing. I've got to tell you this. Okay. You need to have the expectation effect by David Robson. Okay. He would blow your face up. I'm not just saying this because he's British. But he stinks of you. He absolutely reeks of you.

What does that mean he reeks of me? Like you and him would get on like a house on fire. Oh, I love that. There's a lot of affinity between the two of you. Let's fucking go. He will crush on your show. I would love to hear the conversation. He's been on twice.

He did one about personality, but the first one about the expectation effect. Basically, placebo and nocebo scaled across all of life. Two best examples of this. The people reporting gluten intolerances is 10xed in the last 20 years. Why? Well, maybe it's that there's something. about our microbiome that's adjusted. Maybe it's that the type of gluten we have is more concentrated.

It's a leaner, meaner kind of gluten or something like that. Or maybe it could be that there's been some demonization of gluten over the last few years. And people are believing that it is worse for them than it is. So they bring people into the lab, people who are tested for biological gluten intolerances. Some do, some don't. All believe that they do. Everybody sits down. Everybody is given a meal. Everybody is told that the meal has gluten in. People start breaking out in hives. They run to the toilet.

They've got inflammation. Their face turns red. There isn't gluten in the entire building. There is no gluten in the entire building. And these people are having all of the effects of this. Second study, even better, I think. So people have a, there is a particular genetic mutation, a single polymorphism or maybe a little bundle of them, which allows you to blow off CO2 more efficiently. Okay.

These people tend to be better athletes, they're better endurance races. They're more efficient. Their breathing is more efficient. I don't have this gene. I don't know whether you've ever seen me without a hoodie on, but I have not built for cardio. People are brought into the lab. Even numbers with and without this mutation. Okay.

They've done the test on them. They're mixed up into groups. So 50% with and without in Group A, 50% with and without in Group. And they don't know if they have it or not. They don't know. Okay. Group A is told, guys, you've got this mutation. You should absolutely crush it.

Remembering that there's 50% of the people who don't have it in Group A, you should absolutely annihilate this test. This is really in your wheelhouse. Group B are brought in. They say, without this mutation, things are going to be a little bit tougher for you. Remembering that there are people who do have it that are in Group B. Group A outperforms Group B, including the people who didn't have the gene mutation but believed that they did. And it caused him to come up with this synopsis, which is your expectations are even more powerful than your genes. Yes. And this just plays right into what you're saying. Yeah. And the other thing is what she, what Dr. Leah Crum said is that, you know, and I find it personally extremely exciting to know that there are settings in your mind that can have that powerful of an impact on your physiological state. Because when you say the thing, no matter what happens, I can handle it, right? I'll be okay. What is it? Say it again. I will be okay no matter what happened. I will be okay, no matter what happens. I will be okay, no matter what happens. that is a tool that you can use to change the settings in your mind to signal a state of

rest and calmness it's a tool that you can use to change the settings in your mind any moment where you separate from your ability to handle something and to believe that you will be okay Dr. O'Leokrom, oh, no, it was a doctor, yeah, I think it was Dr. Leacrom, said they've done a bunch of research on the type of mindset that has the best results for somebody who just got a cancer diagnosis. And the best recommendation is, I can handle this. And my body can manage this. and it is research that I want you to double down on because I believe this singular tool and writing a book about it

and dividing it into chapters that goes deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper because if you really unpack what you're doing here with this setting in your mind and this statement that you say to yourself is I bet if you did research studies, I bet you would show that it has an instant effect on resetting the stress response.

I bet it would show that it has an instant effect in terms of a state of tension and fight or flight in people. I bet it has an instant effect in somebody's heartbeat. And I bet if you did studies, you would find that it is this extraordinary tool that people can use in moments of anxiety,

in moments of fear, that has not only a biological, impact, but if you track it over what happens to somebody over the course of the next couple months, you would see, I'm willing to go on record a reduction in anxiety symptoms and depression symptoms. You've just pitched me my first ever book, we will see how I get on with that. I'm pretty good at marketing books, you know. I have noticed you seem to be dominating everything at the moment.

Look, I learned this thing from Rogan, which I think is really cool and I think relates to this. The worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. What does that mean to you? That territory that I was talking about before. Here is your life's experience and this is the, the boundaries of your extremity, right? This is how far you've had to push. Yeah. And then something worse happens. If the worst thing that's ever happened to you is somebody spelling your name wrong on your cup at Starbucks, that's a big deal. The worst thing that's ever happened to you is you missing a flight connection for a meeting the next day. That's a big deal. If the worst thing that's ever happened

to you is a parent getting a cancer diagnosis and you can't be there with them, that's a big deal. And it continues to go out and out and out. And what I'm fascinated in is the difference between the people who have that and it becomes a vector of weakness and the people who have that and it becomes a justification of capacity. So what's the difference between someone who says that thing happened and that has now turned into trauma, into difficulty, into evidence that I'm incapable, that I will not be okay no matter what happens, despite the fact that you're still here. And by virtue of the fact that you're still here, you have been okay, no matter what happened, right? And the moment at which you're no longer okay, you're dead. So you're not going

to be around to be able to worry about the problem in any case, right? I will be okay no matter what happens, or I'll be dead, in which case I'm not going to have to worry anymore. So a slightly morbid way to, but anyway, the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. As this expands over time, I think this is why compounding and accumulating those skills and those resilience is a, it takes time, and I don't know how much you can speed run it. I think that it's something that you have to learn through experience. I think it takes however much time it takes. I can't, I don't know why, but I keep thinking about Dan Kessler, who is this incredible expert on grief. And he was talking about how experiences

of grief, not only expand your, it's not even capacity, but expand the experience of pain and loss, but it directly expands your capacity to feel love. And that it's a hard thing to explain when you're going through it, but you only feel that level of loss because of how much love was there. And the other thing that I thought was interesting that he said is that the average time frame for when somebody seeks help for grief is five years after it happened. And sadly, a lot of us have a huge capacity to suffer alone. And one of the things that I believe is true is that people change because you either have this moment of clarity about what's important and what you want and you just drill right towards it, or more likely, you feel so much pain that the only option is to move away from it and do the things you have been avoiding doing. and oftentimes it's those moments of pain that give you the clarity

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That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. Everyone's growth germinates from their lowest points. There's this quote from Freud where he says, In retrospect, the struggle will strike you as most beautiful. I think that's a... Only when you're through it. Well, in retrospect, right? The struggle will strike you as most beautiful.

Uh-huh. Do you know what the region beta paradoxes? Region beta, you would call it? No. Okay. So it is... Imagine that if you were going to travel a mile or less, you would walk it. Okay. And if you're going to travel more than a mile, you would drive it.

Okay. Paradoxically, you would go two miles quicker than you would go one mile. I would go two miles quicker than I would go one mile. Less than a mile you would walk it? Yes. More than a mile you would drive it. Yes. Okay, got it.

You would go a further distance quicker because of the solution that you chose. Yes. What this suggests is that if we only act when things cross a certain threshold of badness, worse things can be better than better things. So the person who stays in a relationship, it's not that loving, but, you know, they're not abusive and everything's kind of comfortable, but I don't really know if I see a future with this person or the person that stays in a career. Well, I'm not that fired up by it, it doesn't pay very well.

But my boss is kind of cool, and I like the people that I would. work with, the person who lives in an apartment downtown and maybe some mold on the ceiling and I don't really think that the people next door are that safe, but it's not very expensive and it's in a great location. All of these people would be better off if their situations were worse because it would galvanize them to actually go and do something. And this zone of comfortable complacency, right, where you get comfortably numb, velvet prison, whatever it might be, reminds us that sometimes worse situations can be better than better situations because it kicks you back out of the bottom.

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes. I did get asked a question about this at one of the live shows, and somebody said, I feel like I'm stuck in region beta. Should I purposefully make my life worse so that I get kicked out the bottom? And I was like, that's a high risk strategy to actively sort of kamikaze your own life in an attempt. Well, can we just stop and just consider even the question?

I actively know that I actively know that. I'm not in a place I want to be. And I am so scared to make the change that I'm even considering allowing things to get worse before they get better. And that moment of self-awareness is so important because before you hit that rock bottom moment where you're just so sick of your own self that it's more painful to stay where you are than to do the things that you've been avoiding, whether it's break off the relationship or finally post your first YouTube video or quit the job or make a goddamn budget and understand that the reason why you're dead broke is because you're spending more than you earn. Like those moments of honesty,

you have had them probably a thousand times before you actually make the decision that enough is enough. And so I find it fascinating because there's awareness in the question that you are not where you want to be, that your life does not feel like you want it to feel. And here you are asking at a live event, whether or not I should make it worse, when you could make the decision to change now. And I don't judge you for that. I think it's a very important thing because When somebody says, you know, I always am dating the wrong people, you know, I should have broken up six months ago. You knew six months ago. The issue isn't that you don't know. The issue is you can't trust your own instincts because you don't listen to them. And that was my problem for a long time, too. How did you learn to tap into your instincts more? By fucking up my life. Like I, like by ignoring them. Because you don't wake up in the morning and go, you know what I'm going to do today? I'm going to do today. I'm going to do. I'm going to just screw up my life. I think I'm going to, you know, cheat on somebody and drink too much and be just a jerk to my kids. I'm going to screw off at work so that I get fired. That's what I'm going to do. Now, what happens is you start to make small decisions that are not aligned with the deeper type of vision that you have for the kind of person you want to be. And you know, you don't even have to write out what kind of person you want to be. You know when you are

not doing something that is aligned with your values because it feels off. And for me, I can see there were just so many things about my life that were off. And a lot of them were not my fault. You know, I had no idea that I had ADHD until I was 47 years old. One of the reasons why I struggled with anxiety for almost my entire adult life is both because I had a repressed traumatic incident that I did not remember until my late 20s that was stored trauma that set me on edge. I didn't know about it. And then I'm in a classroom and I'm dyslexic and I have ADHD and I am part of what they call the lost generation of women because they only studied ADHD and ADD and boys in the 1970s.

And boys and girls experience ADHD and ADD and dyslexia at the exact same rates. And when little boys have these neurodivergent or learning style differences or all the various things that can happen in the development of a human brain, they present very differently than girls. Fidgety, like I know I have a son who's this way. Interruptive.

Disruptive. Yeah, they call it a behavior. your problem. And then it's very confusing because you can hyper-focus on video games. Why? Because you enjoy it. So it takes a lot less mental fuel for you to do it. But when you have to direct your attention and focus, it's something you're not good at, it drains the mental fuel. You get fidgety. You can't. And so you get labeled a problem. And girls are the opposite. We become very reflective. We become self-critical. We start to withdraw. And do you know the number one symptom that rises to the surface when you have somebody that has a neurodivergent brain or that has any kind of focus or

attention like style issues or, you know, developmental issues, anxiety. Because you are having to walk into a situation every single day where you are not certain about what's going to happen, but you know you cannot do what all these other kids can do. And so there is an entire generation of women that were diagnosed with anxiety in their teenage years and their 20s when the actual issue was ADHD or dyslexia. I was on Zoloft for almost two decades. It helped me climb out of the hole and stabilize. And when I came off it, I had when I was pregnant with my first daughter, I had such a traumatic birth experience. Plus, I was now off this medication that that I had been on for almost eight years.

I had the, a severe case of postpartum, the kind where they, they give you out of van and turn you into a zombie so that you don't like hurt yourself or hurt the baby. I couldn't be left alone. We had to have friends and family sit with me so Chris could go off to work. Like I have been to hell and back mentally.

Wow. And I am, and I only discovered, do you know the number one way that women discover that they have ADHD or a learning style difference? through their kids when they can't have it? Yes. Yes. So when you have a kid who struggles, you then have to advocate for them, you then go through all this like neuropsychovals and stuff. And when our son Oakley, who we found out in fourth grade, and thank God we had enough money at that point to be able to

hire a doctor outside the school, I think of all these kids that are getting passed over, that are not getting flagged at school, that are not getting the support that they deserve, and they're being labeled a problem. Like I live my life believing, Chris, that people want to do well. We want to thrive. We want to do well. And if somebody's not doing well,

they're not a challenging person. They're missing a skill, or they're missing a layer of support, or they're missing the knowledge of what the actual issue is that's causing the behavior. behavior that we see. And, you know, I often think about the fact, do you know who the hardest working kid in a classroom is? It's not the kid getting A's. It's the kid who's failing. Do you know how

hard it is to sit in a classroom and know you're the worst student? Same thing with exercise. The person that's working the hardest at their health is your friend that actually is the most unhealthy. It is so difficult to carry around a lot of extra weight. It is so difficult to carry around a lot of extra weight. It is so difficult to be winded when you're going up a flight of stairs. It is so difficult to live in a world where you feel less than. That's all you think about. And so I, you know, we had our son and he was really struggling and anxiety was through the roof and he was being labeled a problem because he's interrupting class. And we get him evaluated. He's like, well, he's dyslexic. He's just graphic. He has ADHD. I'm like, oh, my God, thank God. Now we know

what we're dealing with so we can support the way his brain works. And I said to his pediatrician, God, you know, that sounds like me. Do you think I might have it? And he looked at me, he's like, Mel, you are the most ADHD parent I have in my practice. You are so accomplished. You miss every wellness appointment. You call in a panic at the beginning of every school year because you missed the appointments this year because, whatever, your kids weren't sick. And now you need all the shots and you need the physical so that they can play sports.

We're like, no, it's coming. Oh, school's starting. Mel's going to call. Of course you are. And I'm like, why didn't you tell me? It's like, I'm not your doctor. And so I went and got tested. And I have to say, I was so relieved and I was also, I felt so bad for the teenage me and the 20-something me.

And I felt so bad for like all the people that I may have hurt or the. things that I did that I felt I had zero control over because I just was not in control of my own brain and my own attention and the way that my body was operating and I didn't understand it. And I had so much regret, especially, you know, I really feel like I just blew the college years, like I squandered that experience because all I did was drink. And then I would go to the stacks to try to study. And the second I would sit down, if you, if you have a any kind of focus issues you'll understand. All of a sudden, my stomach's like,

and I can hear, I have like eagle ears. I can hear people on a different floor, and now that's all I can hear. And the clock, I can't, for the life of me, focus. And I always wonder, why am I the queen of all-nighters? Why am I the person that is turning everything in at the last minute? It's because my brain and body need an emergency and a flood of adrenaline in order to organize itself to focus at something that I'm not

particularly interested in. Do you think you're a surprising person to have become a success? No. If you were to lay out the challenges that you're facing the, I struggle to sit down, I struggle to focus, I'm distracted by the clock, or the person rustling their crisp packets, three tables across from me. Oh my God, trying to crazy. Yeah.

I remember I once didn't sleep the night. before an accounting exam in university because there was a drip. I was in the attic room of this house that we were living in Newcastle, northeast of the UK, and there was a drip, but it was sufficiently intermittent that I couldn't predict when it was next going to come. My point is, it seems to me like if you were to lay out the fundamentals of the person that is Mel Robbins might not be super predictive of someone. that would go on to write a book, which requires a lot of focus and to sit down and

to build businesses and talk on stage, dealing with the anxiety, the uncertainty, the adrenaline, the focus that's required, the executive function to be able to be, I mean, you were here a little bit late, but you were here remotely on time. That seems to me like the person and the outcomes might not be super predictive. I agree. I agree. So, And actually, if you look at the trajectory of people that are having a lot of problems in life, there tends to be a pretty high correlation with neurodivergent issues or learning style issues. And you can get labeled a problem and then the settings in your mind change. And because the teachers around you or the school system or like,

whatever, you do not feel understood, you can start to opt out of your potential. And I don't believe that's your fault. I believe that gets conditioned in people. And there's people who also have the ability to adapt. You know, one of my favorite things that's ever been written about dyslexia is a chapter in Malcolm Gladwell's book, David and Goliath. And I believe the title of it. is, would you give your kid dyslexia? And it is an extraordinary, like, research-based chapter about what happens to people that are in classrooms and you get labeled a problem, and that there are some people that also adapt, because if you can't read and write, because the wiring from your

brain is not going down your hand and get, like, my son's handwriting still looks like he's writing with his feet. And I can't write as fast as my mind works. So you talk about writing books, I dictate everything. And then I can edit it. And so I became very verbal because what you realize is that if I get my hand up first, I can say something proactively and then I won't get called on a bit put on the spot. Right. Okay. If it's on your terms, this is just reducing down the uncertainty again as well. Yes, yes. And, you know, the other thing is that so much of my success was due to negative motivation. I mean, when you're $800,000 in debt and you have three kids under the age of 10 and the restaurant business that your husband has gone into, which you have secured

with your life savings and your house and multiple credit cards and a home equity line, and you then lose your job, and you have friends that have invested, and you have you, you, you, you start to realize that nobody is going to come and pay these bills for you and I don't think Chris is going to figure this out. Like I think one of the hardest moments in my marriage is where Chris said, you don't believe me. I said, I don't think you're going to figure this out.

And I became highly driven because I didn't want to lose my house I became highly driven because there were six months of bills that were stacked up on the counter that I hadn't opened. I became highly driven because I was tired of going to the grocery store and knowing that there was no money in my checking account and hoping that the, like, wiring gods would let the credit card slip through, would you like to do debit or credit credit credit? it. And then it would swipe and I had the whole response rehearsed. I'd cocked my head and I'd be like, oh, well, that's weird. It just worked at the gas station. Let me go out to the car. I've got some other. Come on, kids. And then you don't come back in. And when you reach a point in your life where you have that reckoning that 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 shitty about myself because I couldn't get out of bed or I knew I would 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. And so, for me, it was the pain of the situation that we were in. And it was the truth that it, I didn't believe that Chris would fix it. And that was a very hard thing to say, but it was the truth.

And 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. And, you know, when... Everybody always asks, you know, how did you become Mal Robbins?

And I'm like, 16 years of boring, grueling ass work. 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 want it 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. Now, the results, I think people misunderstand consistency. Consistency is making the decision over and over and the results show up over time. And they show up way further down the road than you think. 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, motivation's complete garbage. It's never there. It's never there when you need it. This is Dr. Kay's research. 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. We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus and your performance. But most people have no idea where there's are or what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year. They run lab tests that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. And seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them, gives you a clear path to making your life better.

Getting a blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it's just $499. And right now, you can get $100 off, bringing it down to $399 bucks. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that $100 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom what have you learned about self-compassion because in this i can imagine an awful lot of self-castigation yeah what have you learned about self-compassion that 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 when you triple down and you call out, 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 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 had a lousy tone of voice with that person, but 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 because you're not kind of like self-criticism is like this roadblock where you stop your own like momentum. Have you ever been in a meeting where, you know, you're brainstorming with people?

And it's like in a flow. And there's one person that's like, well, you're like, what? Dude, like, read the room. And that was a huge revelation to me. And it's a huge part of my philosophy in terms of. of the way that I lead. Yes, and as opposed to no-but, because the no-but feels like it's slowing everything down.

So what I'm interested in is trying to square all of the different circles that we've got going on here. So in one hand, we have a lot of autonomy, intentionality, a kind of ruthlessness with decision-making, a bias for action. Yes. On the other, we have a focus on what's going well, not what's going wrong. We have a degree of understanding and acceptance of where you have fallen short

and where other people fall short too. So self-oriented perfectionism is reduced. Other-oriented perfectionism is also reduced. But then we have this balance between letting things happen, life happening to us or life happening to other people perhaps and us happening to life trying to find the middle of the Venn diagram

of all of these doesn't seem superbly simple, right? I'm going to make a change. That's on me. I'm going to accept myself when I fall short but also have high standards. There's tension. I am going to let other people

show their behavior in a manner that allows me to judge them, but I'm also going to hold boundaries in a way which means that they're not crossed. Yeah. This seems almost artistic in the ability to balance all of these things. It's the simplest thing in the world.

It really is. I am probably, I would imagine you're this way. I'm one of the most intentional people in the world. 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. And a lot of my intentionality, you know, I'll just give you an example. Like, we were ruthless, and I love that you. use that word 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 actually operated with excellence. But I operate with a level of excellence that also demands excellence in the way that you interact with other people. I will not tolerate rudeness. I will not tolerate that you make your emergencies, other people's emergencies in my company. I will not tolerate people being short with other people

that we're working with whether it's vendors or partners that 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 and so that's a fine line but in terms of the let them you know like what are other people

response for what am I responsible for it's so simple 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's face, or they're penetrating your stress. levels. That's all that it is. It's a, 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 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 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? And for the first 54 years of my life, my emotions ran me over. I mean, Chris, I'm married to a Buddhist who's a death dula who leads men's retreats. Do you know how annoying that is? For 29 years, this is probably why our marriage has lasted this long because the dude is chill. And he meditates every morning at 515. I wake up on like a tornado. I have had my hands on the steering wheel of life. Like I have tried to let things go, but I hate letting things go because it feels like I'm losing. I have read every work on stoicism.

I have recited the serenity prayer. I've been in therapy and learned attachment theory. I've read radical acceptance. I know all this stuff. But in a moment when life is stressing me out or I'm heartbroken or I'm frustrated or I feel hurt by something or wronged, I've never been able to pull those intellectual concepts into a practice. And learning that you can truly cue yourself. I'm obsessed with tools. That's what the let them theory is. It's a tool. It takes all this ancient wisdom and applies it as a tool to a very overwhelming moment in the modern world. 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

happening. 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. This is the main thesis of Victor Frankl's Man Search for Meaning. I have a choice about what I think about this. 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. I mean, this has completely changed my marriage. They always say second marriages are amazing. That's especially true when you're still married to the same person. 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 in 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. What are the areas of life, the incidents that have been most challenging when it comes to applying this theory? Yeah, I love that question. Um, it's both, again, I'm smiling because it's, it's the same thing we've been talking about. It's the most challenging and the most rewarding. So the most challenging way to apply the let them theory is a way that will bring you closer to the people that you love. Because when you say, let's just take every single one of us, myself included, has somebody in your family, who has a very challenging personality. It's about to be Thanksgiving that will be presented on the front lines. You know, maybe they have a narcissistic personality style,

and I think the big thing that I believe is that, you know, it's inaccurate to call somebody who has a narcissistic personality style manipulative, because that presumes there's a level of conscious action there. And based on all the research, and experts I've talked to, I do believe that people are made that way through childhood neglect, and they're not even aware of it. And so I think it's just a highly, emotionally immature person who is highly reactive and is not aware because their amygdala is running the entire show at all times. And when you start to use the let them theory with people

in your life that have very challenging, either personality styles or challenging behavior patterns, you really start to see what's theirs and what's yours. And you learn, okay, my mom or dad is my mom or dad. My brother's, my brother. They've always been this way. What if I just let them be who they are? What if I learn how to accept this person knowing that they're never going to change because human beings only change when they're ready to do the work to change for themselves. They're not going to change for you. They're not going to change to save their jobs. They're not going to change for their children. They're going to change when they're ready to do the work to change. No amount of pressure is going to make them change. No amount of wishing is

going to make them change. And so when you learn and start to say, let them, let them be who they are. Let them think what they think. Let them act how they act. What if who they are, what they think, and how they act is annoying or frustrating or insulting to you? I'm sure it is. You have a choice. That's the let me part. Because the mistake that I made forever was thinking I could somehow change the annoying, frustrating, unmotivated, depressed, angry, addicted parts of other people. you can't because people only change when they're ready to do the work to change for themselves. So when you say let them, you're actually, for the first time ever, accepting somebody as they are, seeing somebody as they are. So we've been so busy judging people and thinking we know better and expecting things from people that we are getting the fundamentals wrong.

Loving somebody means actually seeing and loving them as they are. it doesn't feel good when you're in a relationship with somebody whether it's a parent-child relationship or it's a sibling relationship or a friend relationship or a marriage or dating where you know the person's always nagging you

because they know better. If anything, it makes you double down on who you are. Don't tell me what to do. And so when you say let them, you are forcing yourself to recognize who a person is and who they aren't. And you are choosing to accept them that way without the expectation or hope that they're going to change.

And now something shifts because when I actually recognize who I'm dealing with, I now get to choose what I think. And I choose to think when I'm dealing with somebody very challenging, I choose to think there is something that happened to them that they are unaware of. And instead of hoping that they figure this out or telling them what I think it is, I'm just going to let them be who they are. Because I get to choose who I spend my time and energy with. I get to choose whether I look at people with compassion.

I get to choose whether or not I have a family member that's spouting off conspiracy theories and ramming it down everybody's throat and blah-bitty, blah, blah, blah. I mean, have I even asked them? Well, you know, what might make you believe that? What are you listening to? Have I taken a moment to try to cross over that line of division

and say, let me seek to. to understand how somebody that I think I know might believe a bunch of things that make no sense to me. Because if you can't do that, then you're not acting very maturely either. You're sitting back and judging. And look, they may have just absolutely asinine or unfounded or discriminatory or disgusting points of view. But it takes a level of maturity if you want this person in your life, and again, you get to choose, to say, you know, dude, like you didn't believe this stuff two years ago. Like, who, like, what do you listen to? Why do you think those things? You know, why do you think that would work? We just want people to believe what we believe. You know, we want

our parents who grew up in a completely different generation, had a completely different level of support, had completely different reference points to somehow just absorb everything that we think is right. So we'll sit in judgment and think they're idiots for not thinking what we think, but we never stopped and go, like, oh, wait a minute, why might you think that? What were the experiences in your childhood? If you start to really connect the dots, there are always dots that connect to why somebody has the settings in the minds or the beliefs that they have. But if you get so reactive and judgmental with people, you'll get dysregulated and not be able to just be curious. And so when you say let them, you are teaching yourself how to operate with acceptance and compassion.

When you say let me, now comes personal responsibility. Let me stop expecting people to change. Let me see people and accept people as they are. And then let me ask myself, based on my values, what do I want to do here? You know, one of the things that I find is that, you know, it's really easy on social media to talk. about cutting people out. Very easy to stop talking to people, but have you actually had the conversation? Most people haven't. And when you see that somebody's challenging, if you value family and it's a family member, you get to choose. Do you want to spend two days or two hours

with this person? Is drinking involved? Are there topics you're going to raise? And most importantly, are you driving to the family time, bracing, because you're hoping things will be different, that bracing is part of the dynamic that is creating all of it. If you're like, let them, let my uncle drink, let my dad do his thing, let my brother do his thing. I see, I know these people, I'm related to them, but family matters to me. And it matters to me to show up because I really care about my mom, so I'm going to put up with everybody else's stuff, but I'm not going to expect it to be any different. I'm just not. And I know that I can leave a dinner table or a date or an interview or a job

or a text chain anytime I choose. I'm in control. And when you're not bracing and you're in the let me zone and I'm going because I choose to, not because I have to, you are the most powerful person in the room because nobody rattles you. Because you're in a space of just, just allowing people the dignity of their own experience, even if they're frustrating, even if they're annoying, even if they're offensive. Because you can leave. And the funny thing you're going to notice is everything changes.

This is really also helpful with dating, because there's nothing confusing about dating. What's confusing about dating is that you tell yourself a story based on your expectations of what you wish were happening. People's behavior is very, very clear. We confuse ourselves. Like, if you're with somebody who will not put a label on the relationship, it means they don't like you. They like sleeping with you.

And so you have to let them not want to put a label on it. And that doesn't mean you're allowing yourself to being disrespected. It means you're recognizing that how somebody treats you is the truth about how they feel about you. And now you get to do the let me part. Let me ask myself, is this attractive to me? let me ask myself, am I hoping this person is going to change? Am I willing to accept this behavior as it is because I'm now participating in it? Or do I want something different?

And if I want something different, you don't get it by changing another person. You get something different by changing yourself. And that's true about family too. The more you learn to accept people as they are and as they aren't, the more you stop trying to change everybody else, the more you stop trying to control every family dynamic and you just focus on what are my values and how am I going to show up and do I want to bring the fun

am I being transactional or am I just going because I want to go and this matters to me everything will shift everything because now you're focused on what you can control before we continue I've been drinking AG1 every morning for as long as I can remember now because it is the simplest way I've found to cover my bases and not overthink nutrition

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plus bonus AG1 travel packs, and for a limited time, US customers also get a sample of AGZ and a bottle of omega-3s. Just go to the link in the description below or head to drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. I'm fascinated by how many relationships have survived because people have fallen in love with the potential, not fallen in love with the person. Yeah. That by pushing and trying to coerce or encourage or cajole or criticize somebody into the outcome that you want from them, you never actually have to come face to face with the potential fact that is, we're not a good match. this is incompatibility yes and you're you're hiding you're obfuscating the truth of that level of compatibility within the relationship with your what if they when they I can get them to be this person

yes I imagine that many relationships have lasted way longer than they should have done because somebody is in love with the idea of the outcome that this other can turn into if they will just finally listen to me, as opposed to seeing, well, this is who they are. This is just not a good match. We're just simply not a good match for each other. I think all relationships are this. I do. And the reason why is we think loving someone is changing them.

And I want to be very clear, if somebody in your life is struggling, it's a beautiful thing to want them to change. If somebody in your life is not operating at their potential, whether they're flailing at school or, you know, they got laid off and they can't get motivated to find a job and you see a bigger possibility and you believe it, it's a beautiful thing. What I did wrong forever is I went about the type of support and the kind of influence that I had incorrectly. I was working against human behavior. I was coming in because I'm worried and I see the potential and I want to help you and I want to motivate you. And I think I know best. And so I'm going to come in and direct it and just kind of tell you what to do and I'm going to help you with the trainer and get you the therapist. And it doesn't work.

It actually makes the situation worse. And the thing, how you know that you're in a relationship where you're compatible is you just got to ask yourself, if this person never changes, if they continue shopping the way they shop and sneaking the Amazon bags or boxes into the house, they're always going to do this. If they're somebody that loves to spend every Saturday at the golf course and then go to the bar for six, they're always going to. going to assume this is who they are? Can you love them exactly as they are? Or are you going to hold some higher standard over them at all times? And if you can't say, I can let them be who they are and let them be who they're not, and they still represent 80% of the things that actually matter. Are they loyal? Do they have good relationships? Are they somebody that you, you know, I always say to my kids who are 26, 25, and 20, your person is the person that feels like home base. You come in and you

walk through the door and you shut the door and you just can exhale. That's your person. Because people can learn skills. People's health is going to go up and down. But if you, you you've got the basics. You feel like you can be yourself. This is a loyal person. It's a kind person. And the most important thing, and you probably know this research, 69% this comes from the Gottman Institute, 69% of the stuff you argue about, never, never going to change. Never. It's not. The real deal breakers are this. If being with the person requires one of you to give up on a dream that you have, whether that's living near your parents when you have kids, or that's traveling the world in a van, or it is starting a restaurant business, if you're going to have

to give up on something to be with this person that is a dream of yours, or if you have to compromise your values, those are the things that cause tremendous resentment over time and ultimately end a relationship. But all the crap that you argue about that's day to day, the ups and downs of people's weights, the ups and downs of their mental, that is what you're signing up for. And so you got to look at how do I feel around this person? Do they have the stuff that actually matters? Because people are going to lose their hair. They're going to get fat. They're going to get skinny. They're going to have issues. They're going to have good jobs and bad jobs. Stuff is going to go sideways, is this who you want to do all that with at their core? And if you can say yes,

then that's the right person. If you're like, now you're in the danger of sliding, sliding into a situation that, oh, now we're moving in, oh, well, now everyone's getting married, now I should probably get married. It's good enough. And what you're actually dealing with is this fear that you're not going to find someone. this fear that, well, you know, it's like 60% Mel. But, God, you know, it's been four years and I don't want to be back out there again. And, oh, God, really? Yeah, the person you spend your life with is probably the most important decision you're going to make

if you end up spending your life with somebody. A friend asked me at a 30th birthday party last year in Miami Who's your best friend It's like that's a little bit of a strange question To ask somebody after age 13 Like best friend Okay let me reframe it for you Who is the person you can sit in silence with

With the most comfort And who is the person you can speak to with the least filter And I thought that that was such a lovely way to remind you what home base feels like. Homebase feels like sitting in silence and not needing to fill it or speaking without a filter. Both ends of the extremity are as comfortable as possible. Yeah. And I feel like that's the same with your partner. this is not me just selling my own industry as a good one to date inside of but as far as I can see

marriage is one big long podcast it's one huge fuck-off podcast right your partner should be someone that you can speak to for 20,000 hours and still find them interesting still find the conversation generative right wow there's more to learn about them they're they're bringing new things in this is so great yes not unpredictable not chaotic not not fiery sparky i don't know if they're going to be upside down or they've you know bought a donkey or whatever but generative i'm fascinated by them and a final element on this i think's really interesting is a sort of a divorce paradox where um people who from the outside appeared to be each other's favorite person end up getting divorced and this is because the way the people disagree is a much

better predictor of how long a relationship will last than how they enjoy each other's time. As far as I can see, relationships end because of disagreements being too many, as opposed to happiness times being too few. And there are many people who on the outside, well, Julie and John, no, every single time that we were out with them, they're having a great, it's like, yeah, they're wonderful when things are good, but they are so bad when things get even a little bit uncomfort. Because they either don't talk or they do nothing but yell. You know, one of the interesting things about that moment in our marriage when I said to Chris, I don't believe in you.

I don't think you were going to fix this, is that it was, I'm sure, brutal for him to hear. And it was brutal for me to say, but it was the truth without a filter. Because I could see that I had married a man who had bought into the myth that gets sold to you guys by society. that your worth is in providing that your value is in the money that you make he was chasing a career in the corporate world because that's what his dad did and he's not that guy

he is the most unmotivated by money dude you will ever meet in your entire life he would live in a yurt if he could he is here on the planet for a different purpose and I knew it I mean there's a reason why he had been laid off six times there's a reason why he

just didn't have the fire didn't mean he wasn't working hard and the fight in that realm he was going down the wrong path and it's easy to see when it's somebody that you love deeply and you know deeply, when they are not acting in alignment with who they actually are at their core. I mean, again, this is a man who sits with people who's dying.

He is, you know, excuse me, he's out in the woods with 12 guys leading deep retreats, getting men to have conversations with one another about the self. and feelings and the things that they hope and dream about. And so I agree with you. I agree with you that being in a relationship with somebody that you shouldn't be the same person. You should have this sense that you can grow alongside this person and that they will support you in doing that.

It's a beautiful idea of the Michelangelo effect. two people in a relationship, they see the best of each other and they help to form that in the same ways. Michelangelo sees David inside of clay. It's rough hewn, inside of marble, rough hewn, and I'm slowly going to chip away the bits that aren't you to allow you to emerge and be more beautiful. But I think finding this balance between, I'm going to change who they are fundamentally, I don't love them for who they are, versus I have this vision for who they could be that would be better, better for them, better for us, better together, better independently. the devil does feel like it's in the details here. Well, not really.

Do they have that vision? Like, if they don't have that vision for their life, then you are robbing them of the dignity of their own experience of their life. You're not making them more of who they are. You're making them less of who they are. Correct. More of someone else. Yes, like I think about this a lot, like, you know, with three kids,

my job is not to mold them into something. My job is to help them become who they are. And you don't do that by telling your kids. who they are. You do that by listening. You do that by following their lead. You do that by asking them when they have a problem. I don't know. What do you think? How would you like to handle this? What do you think might happen if you do that? And you're leading the self-discovery. You're giving somebody permission to have their own ideas. And so there's a way to do this, by the way. And our friend Dr. Kay contributed a lot to the Let Them Theory book all about,

the science of influence. And, you know, so did, oh my God, her name just flew right out my brain. UK, King's College, London, I'm sure you've had her on. She studies the science of influence. I can't remember, I can't believe I'm forgetting her name, but you can, through the power of suggestion, and through the power of your positive example, and through backing the hell off and letting people have the space to come to their own conclusions. There's this interesting Reese. Oh, Dr. Talley Sharrett. Dr. Talley Sharrett, King's College, London, studies a science of influence.

And, you know, there's a very, this is the story to kind of keep in mind that I think will help you understand why backing off and allowing people to change on their timeline when they're ready to change for themselves is the way to do it, but you can

maybe have a little influence. If you can back off, off, is you, here's the example. If you and I are at work, right, and every day, because you take way better care of yourself and I'm a workaholic control freak, every day, right around noon, I see you, close your laptop, you get up, you walk outside and go for a walk, and I'm like, tap, tap, tap, tap, jamming the tuna sandwich in my mouth, tap, tap, and then you come back and I notice you, you don't even talk to me, by the way.

But you look, refresh, you kind of smile, and you sit back down, you go right back to work. this may go on for a couple weeks. You never once asked me to go for a walk, not even once. And one of these days, I'm going to look up and be like, my God, it's beautiful. You know what?

I think I'm going to go for a walk. Now, here's the interesting thing. I don't think it's your idea. I think it's mine. But it was the power of your influence and the fact that it looked good, and there was zero pressure, and more importantly,

and I think this is what we all need, you gave me the space and the dignity of my own experience as a human being to actually come to my own conclusion and when you think you're doing it for you, you feel more empowered. I've got to give you this story. Tell me.

Jim Downey, S&L writer. Uh-huh. Interview for the New York Times. He said, I probably shouldn't say this. but now that I'm retired, who cares? One of my techniques for sneaking a line reading would be, let's say the performer had just been steadfastly doing it in a way I didn't think was helping. I would say, there was something you did that I really liked,

and it would be something that the performer in no way did. Then I'd give them a line reading, pretending I was merely quoting them. There is almost no limit to what you can get people to do if you let them think it's their idea. It's true. It's true. It's so true. Funny and manipulative. No, it's funny and it's not manipulative because you are working with the wiring.

And the intent is good. Like, see, this is the thing I want to double down on. We judge people and we worry about people because we do love them. And we do want the best for them. That's amazing. He wants the talent to do a great job. It's good for you. You want to do the best that you can.

Yes. But if I push up against you, what happens? You push back. Yes. And so when you kind of come in that way, there's no resistance. Interesting, the way that sort of human psychology works, that levers, I think a lot about levers in life, small movements at one end that have outsized returns on another. Ways that you can have big impact with less effort. And it's one of the beautiful things about learning behavioral economics or psychology or evolutionary psychology. Why are we wide the way that we are and how does this feed into our most? motivations for what it is that we want on the other side. Realizing that there are just, the goal that you have, laudable as it may be, the strategy,

as you said, the tools that you're using, a slight different angle into this is going to get a totally different outcome. I have to bring this up. So I was listening, I can't even remember who it was. I was researching. I remember where I was. So I was in my old house. This must have been over a year ago.

I was in the kitchen of my old house. I was listening to an episode between you and I guess that I had that was coming on. And you said a throwaway line that I haven't stopped thinking about since then. You said, all my life, I always felt like somebody was mad at me. It was felt like there was somebody,

I'd done something wrong. Somebody was mad at me and they were going to find out. And I thought that was just so interesting. It was the first time I'd ever heard anybody, and it certainly resonates with me. Why does it resonate with you? It's just that sense, that sense that someone's mad at me.

I've messed up or somebody's going to shout in me for something that I've done or not done. I should have, I don't know what it is, I don't know who it is, I don't know where it's coming from. Yeah. This like ambient sense of surveillance or judgment or judgment or. wrongness, not enoughness. Yeah. And that was the first time that I'd ever heard it. And I really thought, wow.

Like I really, you know, the beautiful thing about listening to that I found, especially in my late 20s and now that I'm part of the industry, listening to conversations is that you get to hear the inner texture of somebody's mind in a way that makes you feel less alone. Yes. Because you think, I thought it was just me. I thought this was some personal curse, one in eight billion. that I'd been fucking, you know, bestowed or thrown at by the gods. And this unique idiosyncratic formulation that I am

was broken or deficient or defective in some way that nobody else can understand. Correct. And to hear someone else say something that is close to you, you go, maybe this is a feature. Maybe it's not a bug. maybe this is the cost of business or the price of entry. It's just a setting in your mind.

And that was, I'd be willing to guess that was either Dr. Paul Conti from Stanford. Was Dr. Paul Conti. Yeah. And the reason why I remember it, because it also came up with Dr. Gabor-Mate. Wouldn't have been Gabbo he hasn't been on, but Paul has. My show? Yeah. Paul has been on my show. Gabor hasn't been on my show.

Got it. Okay. Got it, got it. So the part of the conversation that I had with Dr. Conti that was revelatory for me, and I thought, why don't we teach people this was there was an entire conversation about a psychological developmental window that Dr. Conti called attribution. And if you think about the design of a human being, I mean, the intelligence in the design of a human being and how we are wired to grow and it's just mesmerizing. But there is one aspect of the way that a human being is designed that I think is flawed and highly cruel.

and it's this developmental window that Dr. Conti talked about in the interview that I did with him on my podcast around the fact that children do not have something called attribution, meaning because our safety is predicated on being able to be secure and safe and attach to the adults around us. We can't survive without them. We as children are wired to be completely tuned into them. But we do not have yet the ability to attribute anything that's going sideways around us to anyone but us. So when mom or dad come home or the teacher or anybody else comes home and they like slam

the thing down and you're like, you know, you don't think they're wrong. You don't think, yeah, something happened at work, mom's man, dad's, has nothing, you think I'm wrong. And because you're supposed to, for your safety, stay connected to them, it trains you that it's your job

to somehow make this okay. And for me, for some people, that means you just go into yourself and you shut down. Some people lean in and, you know, try to make everything okay. And what can develop is just this lagging sense that someone's mad at me. And this also happens a lot if you grew up in a household where there's a lot of chaos or there was abandonment or poverty or, you know, this feeling like, you know, I don't know what mood somebody's going to be in.

I'm going to be walking on eggshells or the other shoes about to drop. I'm not safe. Unpredictability. Unpredictability. Yes, yes, because we are so emotionally just, we're in that theta state where everything is hyper-developing and we're like a sponge, absorbing everything. It is so common. And I think this is why it's hard to get out of bed. Yeah, sure, the cortisol and everything else and beds are cozy and you're with your loved one and the dog's in there.

And it's wonderful. Why do you want to get a bed? I think there's a deeper psychological thing for a large number of people that over and over and over again in your childhood, you woke up in a situation that put you on edge. I'm safe in bed. Bed is certain. Outside of bed is uncertain.

Yes, that's why you feel dread. Like, the second I get out of bed, I don't know what mood they're going to be in. The second I get out of bed, I got to that school where I don't, like, belong. The second I get out of bed, you know, my dad's going to be screaming at me. The second I get out of bed, like, I don't know what I'm, like, there's no breakfast. You know, it's really cool that I learned on that retreat. Joe told this story, he's got daughters. Uh-huh.

And his daughter was six years old. And there was a period where she was getting upset a lot. Uh-huh. And he found her crying in the bathroom. And he said, what's wrong? Honey, like, what is it? And she was crying, but the way that she was speaking sounded angry. He said, are you upset or are you pissed off?

She said, I'm pissed off. He said, okay, you know when you're crying? How often are you pissed off and how often are you sad? He says, at least half the time I'm pissed off. He said, well, why is it that you're crying when you're pissed off? Why aren't you angry? He said, well, when I cry, my sister comes to comfort me. But when I'm angry, everyone runs away.

She's adapting. That is, that hit me like a fucking ton of bricks because it goes to show in this. This very strange way, sadness is pro-social and anger is antisocial. And this is why I think so many people who are regularly sad and down have a poor relationship with that anger. They have learned that if I shout and scream, people run away, but if I cry, people come and help me. And just that, wow, maybe I'm not sad. Maybe I'm angry. And maybe I have the right to be angry.

maybe I'm allowed to be angry but anger there's two types of people in the world as far as I can see there's people that get mad and people that get sad point the finger at the world and people get sad point that madness inward and yeah it's

it's very interesting to work out how childhood patterns percolate through into adulthood and when you see everybody is essentially a grown-up infant still walking around the patterns that were ingrained decades ago, you know, I had Bernie Sanders on the show, a couple, like, guys, 83. Like, the stuff that happened to you,

how many of the things from your childhood can you still sort of viscerally remember all of these experiences, this stuff you've had to learn? But you're still programmed by it. Yeah. As Paul Conti says, even if you can't recall it, it's still... But what's exciting, and this is, I think, the through line of a lot of what we've been talking about.

The cool thing about the ability to reflect and notice, Oh, that feels a lot like me. Oh, interesting. Is now that you're aware of it, you can stop and ask yourself, does this setting work for me? Because when you were little, it helped you. It's a sign that you were mentally well if you woke up and you were a little nervous if you grew up in a household where things were chaotic. That's a sign that things were working correctly. But if it's not serving you anymore, I think it is so exciting to know. It's simply saying, wait a minute, does it really help me to wake up every day and go, somebody's mad at me? Or could I now notice that's there and use a tool? And your tool works for this, by the way. I'm going to be okay, no matter what happens. I'm going to be okay, even if somebody's mad at me today. Like, you can, once you identify the levers and your sentence is a lever you can pull to double down on your capacity, which is where the source of your power is.

Mel Robbins, ladies and gentlemen, Mel, I'm so glad I got to meet you. You are the real deal, and I'm very glad that you are. Thank you. I love your work. I already can't wait to sit down with you again. Thank you. Well, I can't wait to sit down. with you. You know, one of the things I'm grateful for is that all of this has happened late in life.

Like, when you almost lose everything that matters, and, you know, we all know what matters, because what matters is the things you're going to be thinking about on your deathbed. It's not the stuff that you have. It's not the money that you have. It's the people around you. And it's whether or not you can reflect back and say, was I a good friend? Was I a good parent? You know, was I, you know, a good person? Did I use the time that I had here in a way that made me proud of myself? Did I let myself live the life that I felt deeply inside me that I wanted to live? And so when you have an experience where you almost lose that, your marriage, your home, your sanity, your mind's said all of it, you don't forget what matters. And everybody's asking me, you know, since the

podcast is so crazy, popular, and this book is taken off and is helping people, what are you doing next? I'm like, what more do I need? Like, I'm, I want more time with the people I love. I want to find more time in my work life and for my team so that we can be more creative and have a bigger impact, but not do more. And so I appreciate you saying that you were happy to meet me and that the experience made you feel like I am actually the person that you believed me to be. That means a lot. I appreciate you. Thank you. I appreciate you, too. When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books, the most impactful

ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the most dense and interesting. But there wasn't a list of them. So I scoured and scoured and scoured and then gave up and just started reading on my own. And then I made a list of 100 of the best books that I've ever found. And you can get that for free right now. So if you want to spend more time around great books that aren't going to completely kill your memory and your attention, just trying to get through a single page, go to Chriswillx.com slash books to get my list completely free of 100 books you should read before you die. That's chriswillx.com slash books.