The Resilient Mind - See It, Believe It, Become It: Using Self-Love and Visualization to Transform Your Life - Mel Robbins

Episode Date: December 22, 2024

Mel Robbins is an accomplished author, motivational speaker, former lawyer, and one of the most sought-after self-help experts in America. Her TEDx talk, "How to Stop Yourself Over," has been viewed over 25 million times and has helped millions of people around the world change their lives for the better.Learn More About Mel's training: Make It HappenDownload Mindset App for free and listen to 5000+ of the World's Greatest Motivational Speakers and Thought Leaders: https://bit.ly/mindsetxTheResilientMind Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠Special thanks to Lewis Howes, subscribe to his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/lewishowesWatch the full interview on Lewis's page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgOE-5k0rvs&t=35s Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to, see it, believe it, become it, using self-love and visualization to transform your life with Mel Robbins. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. I think, well, I think the law of attraction of manifesting are the same thing. So law of attraction for everybody who has not read the secret is simply your thoughts become things. And it's true. We've talked all about how when you have a negative self-talk, it tends to draw more of that to you. I think about it like lint in a dryer.

Once negative stuff starts collecting, it collects a lot more. We can also talk about your brain filter or something called the reticular activity system and how it is a live network that filters the brain. We'll dig into that deeper, but let's do surface level right now manifesting law of attraction. So here's what everybody gets wrong about manifesting. Everybody, at least kind of in the mass market, what you're training, to think about when you think about manifesting is vision boards. And when you hear the word vision boards, you think about the big stuff. Should you have big dreams? Of course you should. Should you

dream of building a mansion on the ocean if that's your thing? Yes, should you dream of the log cabin? Yes. If you want a Lamborghini or the new Ford Broncos, should you put? Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. If you want the family, if you want the body, should you think about, yeah, absolutely. Here's where everybody goes wrong. You dream about the end. You make this gorgeous collage of all this stuff that has nothing to do with your current life. That literally, as you're sitting in your studio apartment with the cat box that hasn't been changed in two weeks. No food in the fridge.

No food in the fridge. And you're looking for a job and you're staring at a mansion going someday. It's going to make you feel like a loser. because the gap between where you are and where you want to go, it seems insurmountable. And so what happens based on the research is when you only visualize the endgame, Lewis, it's demotivating. At first it's really fun to have a bottle of wine and make your like collage. I'm going to visualize. I'm going to slap this up.

There's my vision board. It's fabulous. Law of attraction, baby. Come up. I'm off. Think about it. It's going to come to me. Okay, I've been doing this for two days.

I'm not, I'm still in this apartment with the cap box. It needs to be changed. The way to visualize properly is to visualize the bridge between where you are and where you need to go. The bridge. Yes. And particularly the horrible stuff. So let's use your example of the marathon. The vision board would be Lewis Crossing.

The arms up at the medal. The bow. The high fives. Yeah. I did it. Yes, I did it. Exactly. That will not help you.

because when you hit mile 13 on the actual race and it is sleeting rain. You just say, why am I doing this? Yes, it feels nothing like that thing on your vision board. You are going to start a negative dialogue. I can't do this. My knees hurt. This is not what I thought it was going to be. I'm not ready for this.

I'm not running New York. I train in L.A. Are you running in New York? L.A. Okay, good. Well, then at least you trained in the right weather. So on and on and you are going to tank yourself. What you do by visualizing the bridge is you train your nervous.

system and your mind to do the hard work. So you should visualize not crossing the finish line, but what is it like to be at mile 12 when your batteries run out on your earbuds? Yeah. No, I'm serious. And you keep going. What's it like when your shoelace breaks and now your heel is lifting and you're starting to get a blood blister at mile 17? What's it feel like when you wake up and it is pouring rain. And you visualize yourself running anyway. That way, when you visualize the work, you are preparing your body for it so you're not resistant to it when it comes. And so you are literally building up almost like this resilience and this muscle inside of you to do the work, to get the thing. So yeah, create the vision board, but make sure in addition to crossing the finish line,

you have somebody running in the rain. You have somebody who, you have an alarm clock that says 513. You have, you know, these images that show the stuff that you don't want to do. So like for people who want to launch a business, for example, like a lot of people that I'm sure follow both of us are dying to launch a business or interested in being an influencer, social media, or making money online. And what you visualize are the checks. Or you visualize the money you're going to make.

Or you visualize how cool it's going to be when you're allowed. lifestyle entrepreneur or whatever the hell it is. Don't do that. Visualize working a day job and telling your friends that you're not going to go out tonight because you're working on something. Visualize making cold calls and being told no. Visualize not going to that party because you're staying in on a Saturday and not going to the barbecue because you're putting in the work. Visualize sitting at a seminar and learning for other people. Visualize watching YouTube videos. Visualize your first ever course failing miserable. Right. Like literally that. That's That's the sort of thing that you want to visualize yourself doing and pushing through because that's going to help you do the work.

Yeah. Isn't that cool? I think that's great. Yeah. Visualizing. So in order to manifest what you want, don't just visualize the good things happening. Visualize the bridge all the things that's going to take together. Yes.

And the hard parts of the bridge because then you're ready for it. Then you're like, I didn't expect this is hard. I mean, it's still going to be hard. Right. But you're less likely to quit. Yes. Well, so I am constantly training my mind. to work for me. And there's this little trick that I talk about in the book that is all sort of

the beginning of having a high five attitude. And a high five attitude is the ability to catch yourself when you're going mentally low and to flip yourself back up into a high five attitude. Okay. The thing that I know to be true is that you cannot control the things around you. You can't control what's going to happen. You can't even control how your nervous system might respond or what thoughts might pop into your head. But you can always choose what you do next and what you make it mean, right? And so that's where all the power is. Yes. And so I do this thing where I, this is again, it's going to sound so dumb, but it's a way for me to introduce you to the power

that your mind has to change in real time. We've talked a lot about negative self-talk. And part of the reason why negative self-talk is so crippling is not only because you've repeated it for so long and now it's a pattern, but it's also because you have a filter on your brain called the reticular activity system. This puppy is the keys to everything. And it's remarkable that most of us have never heard of it. We've experienced it, but we don't know how to use it to our advantage. So first, let me tell you what the RAS does. Then I'm going to give you an example of when you've experienced it in your life. And then I'm going to explain to you how to use it to get what you want in life. This is like the super attractor manifesting, and it also works for interrupting negative self-talk.

Like it's going to supercharge all the work you're doing with the mirror and interrupting thoughts. So first let's talk about the RAS. So the RAS, imagine a hairnet on your brain. Only it's like electric, meaning it's alive, okay? Now, the RAS has one job, and the job is block out 99% of what's going on and let in 1% of what's going on. Our brains at this moment in history are having to process about 34 days worth of cell phone data in one day. Crazy. It's crazy. And so your RAS has a monster job. It's like a bouncer at a bar. You're not coming in, you can come in. And you've experienced this. So have you ever shop for a car? Yes. Okay, so what's the last car you bought? Tesla. And so before you thought about buying a Tesla, you drive down the road, you don't really think

about it. The second, you're like, you know, I think I'm interested in a Tesla. What do you see everywhere? Teslas. Yes, everywhere. Everywhere. My husband just bought a pickup truck. I'd never even noticed them. Now I'm like, there are baby blue pickup trucks everywhere. What is going on? That's the bouncer in your brain. And let me tell you how this works. There are only four things that automatically get through the bouncer in your brain, the RAS. Number one, your name. So you've experienced being in a crowd of place and somebody's like, you think you hear Lewis,

and you're like, ah, somebody call my name? That was the bouncer in your brain. The second thing that always gets let in is any threat to your safety. So there are loud noises all the time, but only ones in close proximity make you go like this. That was the bouncer in your brain letting it in. Okay.

The third thing that gets let in is when you sense that you sense that your partner is interested in sex with you or somebody else. You're like, Chris, you know, stop looking at you know what I'm saying? You kind of pick up on the signals. That's the bouncer in your brain. And the fourth one, and this is where, this is the billion dollar thing that everybody needs to know.

The bouncer in your brain lets in whatever you think is important to you. So when you get intentional about telling your brain what's important to you, like, I'm interested in a Tesla. Your brain's literally like, oh, let's let all the Tesla's in. Come on in. Here's the downside to this. If you have told yourself that you are a bad person for the last 10 years, guess what your brain thinks is important.

Examples that mean you're a bad person. So I'm going to give you a very specific example. So I personally don't think I'm a bad person. I don't think I'm perfect, but I know I do my best. I mean well, I don't have that story about myself at all. I used to, but I don't. And let's say I oversleep and I miss the dentist. I miss the dentist appointment.

I'm like, ugh, I got to pay the $25. I had to reschedule that thing. That kind of blows. That's all I think. And then I go on. My daughter, who constantly beats herself up and says she's a bad person, this is a real example, by the way. she oversleaps, misses a dentist appointment, and it becomes, see, I always screw everything up.

I'm always messing things up. Like, everything that gets let in confirms that you're a bad person. She finds proof and evidence. Yes, that's the bouncer in your mind. I'm here to tell you that when you get intentional about what you want to think about yourself, it changes in real time what your brain lets in and what it doesn't. that helps you with the other things that you're doing. The high five in the mirror.

I'm not thinking about that. The pathetic mantra, hey, you know, just because I miss the dentist appointment, doesn't mean I'm a bad person. I'm doing the best I can here. Give myself a break. High five. You know what I'm saying?

Shake it off. Get back in there. It's true, right? Right. Because it's these little things. Somebody cuts you off. Somebody reaches for the last thing of cereal that you wanted to buy at the grocery store.

You think it's like a sign that the world's out to get you. This is all your story and your mind skewing the world to prove all of the stuff you keep repeating. And the only way to get a handle on it is to start acting the opposite. Like, high five yourself, even though you don't feel like it. Interrupt the crap that you keep saying. Put your hands on your heart and settle your body down. All of these things are things that somebody does when they care about themselves, when they think they deserve to be treated.

with kindness, when they think they deserve support. And when they realize they need it. And when you start to build yourself back up, you'll show up very differently in other relationships. Absolutely. You know, if you tolerate this kind of treatment from yourself, you'll tolerate it from other people. It does begin with you.

And when you create boundaries and you don't abandon yourself, then you won't abandon yourself with other people either. You won't let them cross the boundaries. Correct. Like, if you stand in front of the mirror, every single morning and you're like, I look like crap. I am not good enough. I'm unhappy with my life. And then you step into a relationship and somebody leaves you on red and they ghost you for three days. Like, you come to expect that because that's how you believe you think you deserve to be treated.

When you stand in front of a mirror and you're like, hey, you're awesome. We got this. I got you. I know it's hard. You know, we're going to go do this. Or, hey, this is a big day today. I've got this huge presentation. I am going to destroy this. You know, like, you get into it. You're excited. Like, then you're creating momentum for yourself. Yeah. Otherwise, what? You're going to stand and be like, oh, my God, I'm going to screw this up. I'm not prepared. It's like the negative morning routine. It leads to negative actions. Absolutely. So this training thing, training your RES. So here's what I want you to do. Starting tomorrow, after you wake up and make your bed and kind of settle your nervous system and high five yourself after setting your intention.

So now you're like sending yourself into your morning routine in a totally different way with a calm down nervous system and intention and this boost of feeling supported and loved and celebrated. I want you to find one naturally occurring heart shape as you go through your day. I saw this in your book. Yeah. It could be a stone. It could be a leaf on the ground. It could be a cloud shape. It could be a coffee stain.

It could be an oil stain on the floor of a garage. It could be a spot on a dog walking by. I want you to tell your mind, let's find a heart. Let's see if we can find a heart. And something weird's going to happen. You're going to see something. And then I want you to literally supersize what's going on in your brain. And what you do is when you see the heart, I want you to then take a moment and literally,

You literally congratulate yourself, like, feel like, oh my God, I found it. Like, whatever you believe in God, the universe, like, greater connection. You put that there for me, and I found it. And I want you to feel this kind of wave of, that's kind of cool. Yeah. I just saw a heart. And then that positive thing, remember how I told you, the bouncer in your brain, pays attention to what's important to you.

Mm-hmm. When you get your nervous system celebratory involved, that makes your brain really pay attention, just like trauma makes your brain pay attention. It does. So you supercharged the experience by celebrating it and then look for another one or out. I see hearts all day long. Yeah. And what happens when you start to play this game is you will start to realize you are walking by an entirely different world every single day because you're not looking for it. There are opportunities.

There are signs. There are mile markers on your path that you are literally tuning out. Yes. And we can all sit in this moment, Lewis, and look back and see how the dots of our life connect us here. The coolest thing about practicing the high five habit, this training of finding hearts and the high five attitude is that you start to ground yourself in the idea that this too is a dot on the map of your life. And it is leading you somewhere incredible. And when you start to have that kind of high five attitude, that there are signs, whether it's the little hearts that you're now seeing, or it's your ability to catch guilt or people pleasing

or insecurity, or the negative self-talk. And be like, nope, not going down. Not thinking about that. Five, four, three, two, one. Let's get that high-five attitude back. I can, I can do this. I can have my own back. It's not going to be perfect, but I can keep going. And you were just talking about how, You never truly learned how to love yourself in your own skin. And you started this daily ritual, this habit, of high-fiving yourself in the mirror. Yeah. I mean, you've lived a pretty full life right now, but you feel like really, you've never truly learned how to love yourself, but now you feel like you know how to? Yes, I do.

Why did you not know how to love yourself in the first place? Oh, that's a big question. I think that most of us are not taught how to love ourselves just for being alive. For existing. For existing, thank you. It's always like we have to accomplish something. Correct. Then we can get love.

Yes. It's the same thing with happiness. Like you're chasing it and you think that if you achieve something, you're going to get it. And you also, or at least I felt the most loved when I was little when I was achieving something. And, you know, I think that. most parents kind of fall into this camp. And it's really interesting to write a book about this and sort of trace back how we go from being little teeny babies that would crawl up to a mirror

and put our hands up and kiss ourselves and love the sight of ourselves to being a self-loathing adult that stands in front of a mirror and either ignores or criticizes your very existence. And I believe that a lot of this has to do with the fact that so much of what you have, learn as a kid is if you do what I tell you to do, then I'll like you, then I'll love you. And so much of your existence becomes complying, fitting in, not making people angry. You learn how to sort of go in and out of spaces, belong to groups, make sure people like you, and you stop focusing on how you were born, which is looking in a mirror and liking yourself. So my formula for being somebody that was worthy of love as well. If I'm accomplishing all this stuff, then I'm lovable. If this person over here

that I love loves me back, then I'm lovable. If somebody likes me, then I'm lovable. Notice where all the sources of love were coming from outside. But I never really understood. How do you learn how to put yourself first? How do you learn how to love yourself, Lewis? How do you do that? You need to start to cheer for support and validate yourself, period. I realize now that I'm high-fiving myself, that I have spent the first 40 years of my life, either criticizing my reflection or ignoring it. How sad is it? It's incredibly heartbreaking and yet extremely familiar to me. And I think a lot of women. Yeah.

And believe it or not, a lot of men. There's a lot of men that don't want to look themselves in the eye and a mirror and be with themselves because they're so focused on the things that they haven't achieved or the things that they failed at. And so they're ignoring themselves. They're not being with themselves. And so first things first, when you take a moment in the morning to just stand in front of the mirror and be with yourself, And then you raise your hand in a gesture that you have always associated with celebration, support, belief, and empowerment with other people.

There's a number of things that happen that can be proven by research. First things first. This is research out of Harvard. It's recent. They've shown in studies that simply taking a minute in the morning to get intentional about who you're going to be today and how you're going to show up, changes your productivity, It changes your level of confidence. It changes how impactful you are as a leader at work and in life.

So this moment in the mirror is not to be diminished. This is a moment for you to be able to take a moment and intentionally align yourself with who you're going to be. Second piece of research is from a field of study called neurobics. It basically means when you marry a physical action with something, a thought that's unexpected, you accelerate the development of new neural pathways. And there's famous studies that have proven that if you brush with like your non-dominate hand while you're thinking something, it sticks in your mind because you have to focus. Well, the same is true when you raise your hand and high-five your own reflection.

You see, you've been doing this for your entire lifetime. So there's already subconscious programming here, Lisa. The second that you raise your hand like this, it is so, programmed in your mind to associate belief, cheering, empowerment celebration, you know, with the high five itself, that it's impossible to go, God, I hate my neck. Boy, is that cellulite ugly. You can't do it because this part of the mind immediately takes over and does all the positive stuff with a high five. It's crazy. Try it tomorrow morning. You will not be able to criticize yourself. Now there's another piece of research around this, which is, you know, when you

When you do a high five, we did one the first one we did, right? We didn't quite hit each other in the right, like, good smack. So what did we do? We did it. Correct. Because a good high five requires you to be present and intentional. Isn't that cool? Yeah.

All of that on me. A little high five. And so what I started to notice was that I was in real time shifting my relationship to myself. Instead of criticizing the woman I saw in the mirror or ignoring her, I was developing a partnership, a trust, a sense of self-validation. A, I have my own back. I see you, Mel Robbins. We're going to have a great day today. We got this.

No matter what it is that life is going to throw at us, you got this. That's how it all started. And then, of course, I put it on my story after a couple weeks of doing it, and people around the world started to post them. pictures of themselves doing it, and then all of their stories started rolling in about the difference that it was making. There was one woman that said that she's been struggling with body dysmorphia for 20 years. Cannot look in the mirror. And after five days of doing this, can stare at herself in the eyes with a grin. Five days. Five days. And the reason why is because of the lifetime association that you have with doing this for other people. So when you try this

tomorrow, here's what I want you to do. Stand in front of your bathroom mirror and take a moment and just be with yourself for a second. And then if there's resistance to raising your hand and high-fiving your own reflection, what is that resistance? And here's some of the sad things that people are saying that I think ring true for all of us. I think most women can relate to this. I think guys tend to have a reaction that's more in the, I must be weak if I need this. When the fact is, if you've played team sports, you know damn well that there's nothing more motivating and there's no inspirational force that's more empowering than being cheered for by your teammates. That belief that they have in you transfers to a belief that you have in you.

And so we know instinctively how powerful this is, and yet we have been trained to deny it to ourselves. That somehow if you have to empower yourself, you're weak. Bullshit. If you empower yourself, you're strong. You're smart. And so with women, you know, with men too, but I've found this to be the case with a lot of women. And this is super sad that there is this belief that if I've done, nothing that's worth celebrating. I don't deserve celebration. That I don't deserve celebration

until I lose the weight and get to that number on the sale. I don't deserve celebration until I get that job, until I'm dating somebody, until I buy that house, until I get through and that's the opposite of what you actually need. You need celebration and support So that you can do those things that you deserve and you want in your life. And so here you are withholding the very thing that you need, support, celebration, love. You're waiting for somebody else to come waltzing in and give it to you, which they're not going to. And the secret to life is learning how to give yourself the support, the celebration, the validation that you as a human being need. So that's one thing that women feel.

The second thing is this idea that if you are somebody that celebrates herself, you're a bitch, right? That there's something wrong with you if you call attention to you. And that may be because your mom, you know, kind of didn't call attention to herself and was uncomfortable being the center of attention. Maybe you got the messaging that you needed to be seen and not heard. Maybe it got reinforced in your family that you're supposed to be the good one or the quiet one or the, you know, nice one or the conscientious student or the this or the that, that there was a role for you to play. And that if you stand there and validate yourself, that somehow it means that you're not all those things that other people need from you. It's complete and utter bullshit. And let me tell you why.

when you were born, celebration, validation, all of that stuff was hardwired in you. Literally. When you were learning to crawl, you saw a mirror. You would crawl up to that mirror. Have you ever seen a baby go out to a mirror? They like, put their hands on looking at them. They love it. It's amazing.

Love their face. That's in your DNA. That's what you are born. You're born to love the sight of yourself. Your life trained you that you're not supposed to do that. And so I'm on a mission to make everybody on the planet understand because this is both for men and women. It doesn't matter where you are in terms of gender and what or all genders that you identify with.

Every human being has three fundamental emotional needs, to be seen, to be heard, and to be celebrated for the unique person that you are. We all love watching these videos go vire. of caregivers coaching little kids to be like, I'm brave, I'm awesome, I'm this. And yet as an adult, somehow we think it's stupid to stand in front of a mirror and tell that to yourself, you fucking need to hear it.

And you're sad because nobody in your life is telling you. It starts with you. The other thing that goes viral all the time are teachers standing outside of classrooms, right? Giving every kid an individual handshake. Why? Because that handshake alone makes somebody feel seen and acknowledged and support it. And I'm here to tell you, if you want that and you do want that,

you need it. It is the most powerful source of motivation on the planet to feel those things. It starts with you. And it can start every single morning with a simple high five in the mirror. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.