The Mel Robbins Podcast - 3 Lessons From One of the Hardest Years of My Life

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

Have you ever had one of those years where life seems to punch you in the face? Where one thing after another knocks you down, over and over, until you start to feel like you are never getting back up. Well, that was this past year for me. People I trusted betrayed me. Plus, I was living 150 miles away from my husband and son, alone in Boston during the week for work. I never saw my friends because I was too busy working. I wasn’t exercising. I wasn’t taking care of myself in general. Honestly, I felt really lonely all the time. And looking back at pictures of myself from that time, it’s easy to see all of that in my face. I think we all know that the greatest lessons in life come from the most challenging things that you face. And while it’s true, it’s not easy when you are in the middle of it. This past year taught me 3 invaluable lessons, and today I’m sharing them with you.  I know you’re going to nod along because you know these lessons are true. I don’t know why they are so damn hard to learn, but my hope is that by sharing what I struggled through and what I learned from, it will save you the headache and heartache that this year put me through. Xo Mel  In this episode, you’ll learn: 0:24: The gory details from the hardest year of my life7:02: Lesson #1 from this year8:30: The journal prompt that gave me a wake up call11:43: How to identify the friction in your life and a major warning if you don’t pay attention15:21: Lesson #2 from this year16:55: How this podcast almost never came to be22:36: The epiphany our son Oakley had27:04: If you’re tired of your excuses… try THIS28:49: Lesson #3 from this year32:31: The mental health crisis I experienced this year and what it taught me For full show notes, go to melrobbins.com/podcast 

Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to an incredible life-changing episode of the Mel Robbins podcast. Today's topic is the three lessons that I have learned from one of the hardest years of my life. from one of the hardest years of my life. This has been a really freaking hard year for me. And there are so many of you that listen to this podcast that are new friends of mine that have met me after the podcast is launched. And you may find it surprising to hear that if I had to rate zero to 10, how hard it was, zero being, this was a cakewalk, 10 being this sucked sour

eggs, this year would be about a 97 on a scale from zero to 10 and if you listen to me today You think well how could that possibly be you've got one of the top ranking podcasts in the world You've come out of nowhere and are just crushing it Mel you seem to have it all going on You're clearly a very positive person. How could this possibly have been the hardest year of your life? Well, you're seeing me after the hardest year. When you think about a lot of the kind of cheesy metaphors in life, it's always the darkest right before dawn. It's always hard right before it gets easy.

And I think one of the things that's true about life is that life requires you to get lost right before you find yourself again. And I'm not going to lie to you. It sucks when you feel lost. It sucks when life is hard. There is nothing fun about it. I do not wish it on anybody. I also know that it is unavoidable.

There are gonna be years of your life that are absolutely amazing and delicious and easy and they're gonna just flow like water flows out of a faucet. And then there are gonna be years like the year I just had that nearly suck you dry. It's like the hits just keep coming. And so I'm going to just at a top level tell you some of the reasons why this year was super hard for me.

And even preparing to talk to you about this. Thinking about what life looked like just over a year ago, I started to get emotionally triggered. Just talking about how hard it's been makes me feel stressed out again. I was so burnt out. I had been running on adrenaline for years. For two years, I had been living separately from my husband and our son because we had raised our kids in Boston and that's where my business was. And during the pandemic, remember that? Hoof. During the pandemic, our son made this decision that he wanted to go to school in Southern Vermont. And so my husband and our son were living with my mother-in-law, and he was going to the

public school three hours away from me in Southern Vermont. And I was down in Boston working. I was living alone. I was not near my husband and son. I would see them on the weekends. I was driving back and forth. And it was just beating me up. On top of that, there was some stuff going down at work that was super painful.

I had somebody very close to me that betrayed me. They stole from me, they lied to me, and it had been going on for a while, and it all kind of blew up a year ago. And so here I am feeling lonely, feeling burnt out and I don't know if any of you have ever had that experience where somebody deeply in your inner circle steals from you, lies to you, does something to you like that. It just takes it to your knees. I had not been exercising consistently. I was grabbing

the alcohol to relieve the stress and loneliness. And in preparing to talk to you about this today, I went back through my camera roll and back through my calendar. And, you know, it's a wake up call because you kind of forget how bad things are once you get through it. I mean, when you're in the soup of it, you feel like you're drowning in sludge. But when you get through it, it's almost like after you have a baby,

you forget the pain of labor. Looking back at my photos from last year, seeing me so worn down, I looked so pale, I looked like a dolphin. You know how dolphins have gray skin? I had no brightness to my face. The life force was just drained out of me. That's just kind of the tip of the iceberg. I was in therapy, I was trying to sort stuff out,

but I was just miserable. And if I'm being honest, I had been miserable for a while. And I knew deep down that something had to give. I knew that I could not continue to go on, feeling so burnt out, surrounding myself with friendships or relationships where I wasn't feeling supported. I was actually getting betrayed and it may surprise you to hear me say, I just felt stuck. I had all these excuses for why I had to keep going and all these excuses for why I, you know, couldn't change things. And I also felt like this was getting done to me. I don't know if you've ever heard that quote that a life is happening for you.

I hate that quote. I'm like, no, it's not. Life is happening to me. Don't tell me when my life isn't working that this is happening for me, screw you. Well, then something happened in December. So, let me just kind of go back, boy, about a year, so a year from now, I had a conversation with a really good friend of mine. And my friend's name

is Pete Shin, and he's known me for a long time. And he said, you know, Mel, you are more miserable than I have ever heard you. And I think that it's time that you truly get control of this, that you focus on your happiness, that you make some serious changes. And this brings me to lesson number one. You're ready? Lesson number one from the hardest year of my life is that your life is always trying to teach you something. You may not want to learn what it's trying to teach you, but your life is always trying to teach you something. You know what life is teaching you and life is easy? It's teaching you what works. It's teaching you the habits and the kinds of people

that make you feel good. It's teaching you what life working looks like. And you know what life is teaching you and life is hard? It's teaching you. What is broken? It's trying to wake you up. I am so damn stubborn. If you think about life as a giant school, life is the greatest school you will ever attend.

You can enjoy it, you can hate it, but life is always going to be school because life is always teaching you something. And do not make the mistake that Mel Robbins makes because I'm a very stubborn student. What happens is if you don't get the lesson that life is trying to teach you, life just brings out the sledgehammer. That's what happened to me. It hit me over the head with a freaking sledgehammer.

And so I want you to stop for a second right now. And think, what is my life trying to teach me right now? And here's a simple exercise that my friend Pete gave me. It's so dead simple, it's kind of nuts. You're going to take out a piece of paper. He said, mal, take out a piece of paper. And I have my journal here. You can hear me like flipping it open right now because this is what actually happened. December 21st, last year, I was speaking with my friend, Pete Chan, I got to find the page here. I should have put a little, oh, here it is right here. Draw a line down the center of the page and write, should I hate on the left and write things I love on the right. And for me, the left hand column was way longer than the right hand column. And he said, Mel, I want you to draw a line down a center of a page and on the left hand

side, this is what it says, shit I hate, on the right hand side, things I love. I want you to write down everything that is not working that you hate about your life. And here's a nicer way to say it. Where in your life do you feel friction? Where in your life do you feel friction? It could be in your body, it could be in your relationships, it could be at work, it could be when you look at your bank account. Where is life creating friction? It's hard, you're frustrated, everything feels like a fight. This is where the lesson is everybody. Friction is how your life teaches you to wake up and pay attention. Friction is where your life is trying to hit you with a sledgehammer.

Because life wants you to be happy. Life wants you to feel good about yourself. Life wants you to enjoy yourself. Life wants you to live in alignment with what's meant for you. I felt friction in every single aspect of my life. I felt friction in my body. I felt friction in my mental health. There was not a place when I sat down to do this exercise where there was not friction. That's how bad it was. I wrote, I hate packing on a Sunday and leaving my family. To drive home and be alone.

I hate flying alone. I hate working alone. I hate being stuck somewhere and not being able to get home. I hate the fact that I feel like I've got to generate all the ideas and keep going and going and going and that I can't stop. I hate feeling insignificant. I hate feeling disconnected. I hate feeling like I'm just going with no plan.

I hate feeling disorganized and dropping balls and ADHD and lack of support on the administrative side of my life. I hate feeling overwhelmed. I hate having to set up technology. I hate never seeing my friends. I hate not knowing what's going on. I hate having nobody to handle things too. I hate that I feel like everything is a broken process. I hate working remote. I hate not knowing how everything I'm working toward is going to connect to something bigger. Wow, that's a lot of stuff that I hate. I hate my negative thoughts. I go on and on and on. My list of things that were causing friction. It just goes on and on and on. My list of things that were causing friction. It just goes on and on and on.

Now here's what's interesting. Life is trying to teach me something. And what my life was teaching me with a gigantic sledgehammer is that it's not working. It's not working. Wherever you have friction, there is either a broken process, or there is something that is no longer aligned with you, or there are the wrong people around you. That's all that it is. And see, we get so attached to the way that things are, that we don't get the lessons. When you don't get the lessons, you close off what could be.

I'm here to tell you that you deserve to have a life where you don't feel friction every day. You're not wired to live a life where you feel that intense. And I can give you some other examples. When our son was in the fourth grade, he would just explode when we had to sit down and do homework at night, like full on temper tantrums. That is friction in a young person's body. That is him feeling this deep sense that something's off. He would pound his head against the kitchen island and he would cry before he had to go

to school. He didn't know what was wrong, but he was trying to teach us something. His body intrinsically knew that something was off, and what turned out to be off is that the kid had profound dyslexia, profound dysgraphia, executive functioning, attention stuff going on, and he couldn't sit in the classroom and neurologically do what was being asked of him to do. And so I'm here to tell you, when you make this list of things that you hate, the areas of your life that create friction for you right now, that's where the lessons are. And those lessons will repeat until you learn them.

Do not be stubborn. Do not look at the friction as if something's wrong. Look at the friction in your life as an opportunity to create alignment, as an opportunity to pull your life back into the other column, which is things that I love. And there was so much that I loved in my life. There was the therapy that I was doing, the time that I was spending

with Chris and our son and building a house. There was the podcast that was out in the future. All of this stuff. You got to walk toward the things. You got to do more of what's in alignment, but I'm telling you right now, the lessons are in the hard stuff. The lessons are in the friction. So, that's lesson number one. Your life is trying to teach you something. It always is. Stop resisting the lesson. When I look backwards now, I can see that I've been addicted to being busy for a long time. I can see that I needed to deal with this friction for a long time.

It's just got louder and louder and louder to the point where I could no longer ignore it. I could also see looking backwards that I had often had people in my inner circle that were doing things like lying and I had ignored it and I had made excuses for people. And so guess what? Those betrayals just got bigger and bigger and bigger until it was so painful that I had to finally learn the lesson. Friction in your life is a good thing

because friction wakes you up. Friction puts a spotlight on what's not working. All right, that's number one. Lesson number two. Your excuses are bullshit. That's right. All those excuses you got, they're just fear. They are just fear.

When you start to identify everybody, all of the areas of friction in your life, and you go to work to learn the lesson, here's what I want you to know, you are capable of changing it. You are 100% capable of learning the lesson and making anything in your life better. I know that is true about you,

and that means that the only thing that is keeping you from identifying the things that aren't working and doing the work to move your life into alignment with who you're meant to be and the things that truly make you come alive. The only thing that's preventing you from doing that is you and you're a fears. Any excuse that you have is just fear. You're afraid to try, you're afraid to fail, you're afraid you're too late and you're a fears. Any excuse that you have is just fear. You're afraid to try, you're afraid to fail, you're afraid you're too late, you're afraid of this, you're afraid of that. Now's not the right time. I don't have this. I don't have that. This person would be upset with me. All of it is fear. Fear of rejection, fear of it not working out, fear

of being disappointed, fear of disappointing others. that's what an excuse is. You're just managing fear. And it's all baloney. I say that because I do the same thing. I do the same thing. I want to take you back just over a year ago. This was shocking when I started to prepare for this conversation with you. Because when I went back through my camera roll and I looked at my calendar, I realized that just a year ago, I did not have a podcast, I was still making excuses about a podcast, I was scared, I want to put this in perspective as you're listening to me. As you listen to me right now, we are one of the top podcasts

in the entire world because of you. We are the number one education podcast in the entire world because of you. We are the number one education podcast in the world on every platform because of you. A year ago I was questioning whether or not I should even start this at all. Let's just let that sit there for a minute. Because if I were still listening to my bullshit excuses, I wouldn't be here behind the mic. You wouldn't be listening to this right now because I'd be listening to my excuses. So it begs the question, what are you still questioning?

So we're talking about what I learned from the hardest year of my life. Lesson number one, friction. The friction in your life is trying to teach you something. So please learn the lesson. And number two, your excuses are bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Same as mine. Let's be honest with one another.

There is something on your heart in your mind. Some change you want to make, some art you want to create. You think about it all the time, but instead of doing it, instead of inching toward it, you know what you're doing? You're listening to your excuses. You know it, you feel it, you think about this thing. That was me. When I think about the excuses that I had, they're the same excuses you had. You're seeing me now. You're seeing the success. So you're sitting there going, well, it's easy for Mel Robbins. Sure. You're not in a book. Are you kidding me? You're seeing now what happens when you push through that stupid excuse. And now I'm going to ask you the question,

if you want to do this thing, whatever it is, travel the world, get healthy, write a book, change your career, go back to school, save your marriage. If you want to do this, why haven't you done it? I'll tell you why you haven't done it. The same reason why I haven't done it. Because you tell yourself, you've missed the window. You tell yourself that it's never going to be you. You want this thing so badly.

Just admit it, I wanted so badly to be a podcast host. I did. But you know what I spent my energy doing? Listening to my fears, coming up with excuses. I'm too late. Somebody else already did it. I can't do it now. I'll just be a copycat. Nobody needs to hear my voice. You know there's five million podcasts on Spotify. Five million.

I miss the window everybody. And see, the truth is, when you start to write it out, all your excuses, you'll realize something I realized, which is it doesn't make any sense because there's nothing stopping you from doing it, except for these stupid excuses. Nothing at all. Who cares? That there's all these people that have already done. Who cares that your friend already renovated their kitchen and they have white cabinets and

you wanted white cabinets. And now you can't have white cabinets because then you're going to be a copy. Are you kidding me with these excuses? You can't go back to the gym because you haven't been one in three months, seriously? Do you know how dumb that is? You can't figure out how to be financially free. Do you know how many people who are stupider than you

have figured that out? Of course you can figure that out. Your excuses are baloney. Their BS, it's just your fear. Just like my fear about being too late, not being good enough. You want to know the real deepest fear? The deepest fear is that I would finally

get off my rear end and pursue this thing. Something I've always wanted to do. And it would fail. I wouldn't be good enough. It wouldn't work out. That was my deepest fear. You may not know this about me, but I got my start in local radio. I used to host a little call in show Saturday mornings in Boston. I got

paid $25 an hour to do. I loved that show. I fell in love with radio doing that show. I took on that job to help pay for groceries. It was a lifeline during a really hard time in my life. I loved it. And ever since then, 2007, I've wanted to get back to radio. And as the podcast market exploded, I wanted to get into podcasting. And you know what I did? I spent years coming up with excuses. Excuses for why I was too late. And you're doing the same thing. Do you know how many times everybody? I would say it's too late. Malia missed the window. Everybody and their mother as a podcast. There's no way you're going to be successful. There's too many real itters everybody. There's already enough nurses. How many of you have said that? Of course you have. There's

enough books. Nobody's going to read my baloney. It's too late. I'm too old. Oh, I'm too young. I'm too young. I was talking with our son, Oakley. He loves streaming. Loves it. Loves playing video games and talking to the people that are watching and playing video games, loves giving advice, is he's to loves doing it. And then we moved to a new school and he was really afraid because when the kid said, what are you into? He's like, well, I love to stream and I like, what? Boom. Stop doing it. Was afraid of what people thought. Again, excuses. If I continue doing this, I won't have friends.

That's bull cocky, whatever the heck the word is. You know, I'm trying to, is that even a word? I don't even know. Who knows? But he hasn't done it for two years. And all of a sudden, because he has felt the pull, the last two nights. And you know what I think it is? I think it's the fact that he was on an episode of this podcast and there was so much positive feedback

about what he shared, that something clicked and he realized his excuses are baloney, just like yours. And for the last two nights, you know what he's been doing after he gets his homework done streaming. Is anyone watching right now? Nope, not a soul, but he's gonna keep going. It's gonna take time and he kind of matter of fact last night, you know, came down for a glass of water in the kitchen I said, what are you doing? He said, I'm streaming. I'm like, well right now. He's like, nobody's watching right now. And I'm like, oh, and he's like, well, mama, it takes time. You got to show up consistently.

That's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to stop this time because I was on a roll less time and I let my excuses and my fear stop me. I love that kid. And I love you. And that's why I'm telling you, your excuses, complete bullshit. You're not too late. You're not too early.

Today is the right day. And you're not starting over. You're starting with all of the experiences of your life. You're doing this at the exact right time. This is perfect. You're listening to me today because you are meant to not only learn the lesson and start addressing the friction, but to one by one knock those excuses out of the way. And you know how to do that? Action is the answer.

Action is the answer. You can figure anything out. Absolutely anything. You can reverse engineer it. You can stalk people. You can figure out what they did. And one step at a time, one day at a time, you can start to align your life with the

things that you truly want to do. And you can push through your excuses one by one with the actions that you take. That's how I did it. I finally got so sick of feeling miserable, so sick of the friction inside me, so sick of denying myself the fricking dreams that I have had, held in my heart locked away. I was so sick and tired of myself that I'm like, that's it, I'm doing it. I don't care if this thing fails.

I'm not doing this for other people. I'm doing this for myself. And that's what you need to do. You're not doing this for the success. You're not doing this for the money. You're not doing this for the money. You're not doing this to impress somebody else. The changes that you need to make. The alignment that you need to bring your life into.

You're doing this for you because you deserve to be happy. You deserve to see your dreams come true. You know how happy Oakley is sitting alone in his closet upstairs, streaming on Twitch while nobody is watching him. You know how happy he is? He is so happy because he has stopped feeling that tension and friction of knowing deep in your soul that you are denying yourself an experience that you want. And he is so happy that he has pushed through his own excuses and fears. And that he is aligned his actions every night with something he's wanted to do. He has kept a promise to himself. That is the coolest thing in the world. That's what this is about. Who cares if nobody listens? Who cares if it fails, because that's not why you're

doing it in the first place. You're doing it because you want to move yourself from a life that feels hard and friction and full of like, ah, resistance that you're putting in your own way. And you want to align your actions with the person you want to become. That's what this is about everybody. It took the hardest year of my life to get the easiest damn obvious lesson that there is. Mel, stop making your life hard. Stop putting energy into the crap that's not working. Stop making all this so personal. Everybody screws

up. Everybody gets in toxic situations. This is not unique to you. Everybody has people steal crap from them or betray them. You're not the only one. Stop tolerating this crap from yourself and just look in the mirror and figure out what you're gonna address and get on with it woman. Like enough, enough. I don't recommend that you have the hardest

year of your life to learn these lessons. That's why I'm sharing them with you. I don't recommend that you get so broken down by your own bullshit that you have a mental health breakdown. I don't recommend that. I want you to figure out what's not working in your life, what aspects you hate, make the list, then get rid of your excuses by fixing this stuff. Absolutely everything in your life can be improved by you, period. And the only thing that's stopping you from doing it is your fear. That fear is going to disappear the second you start taking action.

That fear is going to disappear the second you start taking action. Now, lesson number three. But first, we have to hear from our sponsors. So meet me back here because lesson number three, it is the best one of them all. Now, lesson number three. You and I were just used to friction. That's why we tolerated. You and I are used to the toxic dynamic in our family. We're used to not go into the gym. We're used to feeling tired. We're used to not go into the gym. We're used to feeling tired.

We're used to feeling last on our list. That doesn't mean it has to stay that way. I am telling you, you have within you. If you can write that stuff down, you can figure out how to move yourself, inch yourself from the left hand column, the shitty column, over to the right hand column, toward liking and loving aspects of your life. That brings me to number three. Number three. Change isn were easy. It is easy to identify friction. It is easy to identify your excuses. It is easy to identify the actions that you need to take, but taking those actions and

feeling the emotions that come up and dealing with people's reactions, that's not easy. And it's really important for you to accept that, and for me to accept that, because when you accept the fact that change isn't easy, but it's possible, and it's worth it.

And you're capable of it. That's the truth. Change isn't easy. I mean, this year I reorganized the team. I addressed the betrayal. I got seriously into therapy to improve a lot of friction in my marriage, both on my side and Christ's side. Not easy. It's not easy to sit in a therapy session and have to listen and hear stuff you don't

want to hear. And it's not easy to change your own behavior when you've been doing things for a long time. It's not easy to go to the gym for the first time. Heck, you know, I went to a hot yoga class when I was visiting my daughter in Los Angeles last week. I realized it's the first time I have been in an exercise studio for three years. It wasn't easy to get there. Now, I was happy I went when it was over, but I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and say that this is easy when you know going into it, that it's not going to be easy, but it

is going to be worth it, dammit. And that I am capable. I am capable of showing up for myself. I am capable of doing this. I am capable of Inch and along. I am capable of pushing through the fear. I am capable of identifying friction. I am capable of slowly moving my life From the shitty side to the awesome side When you go into it knowing that, like that's what I did with this house. When we sold our house in Boston, that was not easy. I knew I needed to do it.

I knew I needed to remove that variable from my life. That was not easy. I had a pretty big mental breakdown over it. I did not expect the wave of grief that was going to hit me, selling the home that we raised our kids in. I did not expect how discombobulated I would feel, moving from a place that I had lived for 26 years and the container that held all those memories in that much time. It knocked me on my rear end. It was not easy at all. But now that I am on the other side of it, thanks to therapy and going back on an antidepressant

for the first time in 20 years, I'll tell you, it was worth it. And I was capable. I am proud of myself. I am proud of myself for doing the work to finally launch this podcast. I am proud of myself, not because it's doing so well. I mean, of course, that's freaking amazing because your support makes me feel good and I just can't believe

these episodes are truly changing and even saving people's lives. I mean, that's just extraordinary. But I'm proud of myself because I got over my own bullshit to do this. Do you know liberating that is? When you push through your own stuff, when you commit to your happiness and to your goals knowing this is not going to be easy, but it's going to be worth it, knowing that I got what it takes within me to remove friction, to go toward the things that I want.

It is like one of the most amazing things in the world. And yeah, you may be like my son Oakley sitting upstairs alone in a closet with nobody watching as you put your first video out there. Who cares? You're not doing it for them. You're doing it for you and the potential of your life and the dreams that you have inside of you and the happiness that you deserve. I really feel like there's kind of two states in life because it's about energy. You're either feeling friction and that means something's off and there's just something to address.

Don't beat yourself up. Big lesson for me. Just learn the lesson everybody because your life is trying to teach you something with that friction. Make your list. Any area where there's friction, there's a pattern to address, there's a place that's making you miserable,

there is a process, there's somebody, a person, that's it, that's it, that's all that there is. Every breakdown that Chris and I have basically has to do with the fact that we have a broken process. When we are not in communication, Chris retreats and I keep going. And then Chris feels rejected. I have no idea because I'm blazing ahead 55 miles an hour.

And what is broken is the communication process. Doesn't mean we're bad people. Doesn't mean the marriage sucks. It means there's friction between us because there's a broken process. This is such a huge invitation. Please, please, do not run yourself into a wall the way I did. Do not ignore the lessons in your life

that your life is trying to teach you via friction. Because they are going to get louder. That sledgehammer is a coven. And do not be a stubborn student like Mel Robbins. Do not wait for life to punch you in the face or knock you on your fanny or cause you to have a mental health breakdown requiring prescription medication, which by the way there's nothing wrong with. Sometimes we need those ladders. Sometimes we need it every day, people. I freaking love. Love my selexa right now. Thank you, selexa. You have helped me through this shitty year. I am proud. Proud to ask for help, whether it's for people or it's medication or it's new habits or it's from you, because sometimes it's not easy, but it's worth it.

And you're capable of doing whatever it takes and it might take you years. It took me 10 years to realize that all of my success was born in a moment of crisis. You know, I didn't go, I think I'll write a book today. I'm like, I got bills to pay in a lien on my house and my husband basically has just left his business and he's sobering up and he's depressed. And if we're gonna pay bills, I gotta figure this shit out.

And I have never gotten out of that mode. When you can't pay for groceries, when you got leans on your house, you will say yes to anything that you need to say yes to to stay afloat. I don't think I ever got out of the mode of relating to work as though I was in an emergency. I always assumed my luck would run out, which is why I've

been running like my life depends upon it. And that's why I ultimately hit a brick wall. It wasn't working anymore. It was making me miserable. And so when you look at the lessons, please, like do it now, do not do the same stuff over and over and over for decades like I have. You do not need to wait for a sledgehammer. You can wake yourself up with a blank sheet of paper and two columns and a pen and honor the things that are working about your life. Because guess what? There are a lot of things that are working. And we need to do more of that. And when you are willing to learn the lessons that your life is teaching you at this moment, there's always lessons, I'm sorry, it's

whack-a-moll people, that's what life is. Here's the bad news. I got a lot of shit on the left hand column now too. It just is different stuff from last year. Life is school. You can enjoy it. You can hate it, but you got to attend it. That's that's the deal and There's a lesson every day and the biggest lessons are in the biggest moments of friction and the highest moments of joy If you get serious about paying attention to the lessons and You get serious about your own to the lessons. And you get serious about your own baloney excuses, and you get serious about just taking actions and inching forward every day, and you embrace this notion. Change isn't easy, but it's worth it, and I'm capable of it. You, my friend, will feel the happiness you deserve. You will level up, you will make more money, you will enjoy it.

Imagine enjoying it. And I realize you may be taking care of aging parents, you've got super little kids or you just went through a divorce or you got a big health crisis or you're in the middle of pitching a venture capital firm for the biggest deal of your life, the stakes are high. I get that stuff's going on, but I also know because I have done this in my own life this year. You get to work and my God, you're going to be shocked, shocked, and how proud you're going to be of yourself. And I want you to know that if you don't believe it, let me be the person holding up the light over here, going, hey, come on, walk towards me.

I'll hold this light high until you catch up with me, and then guess what? I'm going to get hit with a sledgehammer, and I'm going to expect you to go forward and hold that damn light high and remind me that I'm going to be okay. Because the second that you start to move, to go forward and hold that damn light high and remind me that I'm gonna be okay. Because the second that you start to move

things of friction from one column to the other, other frictional show up, one of your kids will have a breakdown, like a charm, right? People always say how are your kids doing? I'm like, well today, today everybody's okay. Because God knows tomorrow somebody could have a mental breakdown.

It's whack-a-mall, but we're playing it together, right? We're going to ride the waves together, everybody. That's what I got. From the hardest year of my life, three lessons, please, please share this with everybody. You know, I do this podcast because if I can save you the headaches and heartaches that I caused myself, because I don't know any better, or because I'm stubborn, or stupid about some things, or bullheaded, a lot of bullheadedness runs in my family.

If I can save you the headache, the heartache, that is a life well-lived. I also love hearing your lessons. And I would love to hear what some of your biggest lessons are because I know this hasn't been exactly the easiest here for you either. And so please, when you share this episode, share the lessons that you've learned, changes and easy, but it's worth it and you're capable of it. And the reason why I'm telling you this is because I love you. I do. And I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to make this change happen.

And I also believe you deserve it. Woo! Okay, I gotta go. I need to like a tall cup of water or something because that was a lot. I'll see you in a few days.