The Resilient Mind - The Real Reason You’re Distracted: What You’re Actually Afraid to Face - Mel Robbins

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

Melanie Lee Robbins is an American author, podcast host, and lawyer. Robbins gained recognition for her TEDx talk, 'How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over.' Her books include The 5 Second Rule, The High 5 Habit, and The Let Them Theory. She has been hosting The Mel Robbins Podcast since 2022Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠This episode is brought to you in partnership with Steven Bartlett for more inspiring videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to The Real Reason You're Distracted, what you're actually afraid to face with Mel Robbins. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. You talk about the topic of distraction and procrastination, and it's rarely in this context, but it sounds like a form of distraction.

Distracting yourself from taking a moment to confront thyself. And yeah, to really ask some of those questions, which I guess if you're in a fight or survival state, the answers to some of those questions might be maybe illuminating to a vulnerable, you know, to an extent which will make you feel vulnerable and unsafe, because those are pretty like existential questions to ask yourself, to look at yourself and say, who am I and what do I want and, you know, how do I get it? It's much easier, as you say, just to be swept by the tide. And that's a form of short-term defense.

It feels like a short-timist will just get to tomorrow, you know. Yeah. And some people go through their lives doing that, right? Oh, I was. Yeah. I was. You know, I think that there's also sort of layers of healing on issues. And so, you know, when I remembered the sort of initial incident and I started kind of string together,

holy cow, like all of this is connected in a really interesting way, compounding itself, right? Yeah. talking about it is one layer. And it's a super important thing to do to give yourself the gift of sitting down with somebody who is licensed or who has an expertise in helping you unpack what happened. Because it's only in being able to talk through what happened that you have the ability to start to free yourself from what happened. Like if you can't reveal it, you are definitely not going to heal from it.

And so I had done the layer of talking about it. And then I had gone and done the layer even underneath it of understanding what had happened and understanding how it connected to anxiety and how it connected, how trauma connected to that and understanding the lying piece. And I had even gone and done the layer underneath that, which was starting to interrupt the old patterns that would get triggered and put in new patterns. But it wasn't until recently that I went to the layer that you need to go to

to truly heal, which is to repair the nervous system. And, you know, what is interesting to me about kind of even the whole journey is that, you know, I've had layer after layer after layer. For me, talking about it was very freeing. And, you know, people always say to me, my God, you're so relatable. Like, we open up, boom, right out of the gate. I tell you something that normally somebody reveals like an hour in.

It's because I have a level of freedom around it. And I also know it's a shared experience that so many people can relate to on some level. But it wasn't until I understood how it impacts your nervous system and the connection between your mind, body, and spirit that I began to realize what I think it was Michael Pollan or Tim Ferriss on one of his podcast said,

which is, if you didn't talk yourself into this shit, you're not going to talk yourself out of it. Like, you have to have a corresponding physical intervention if there was something physical that disrupted your body state to begin with. And that makes a lot of sense to me. it makes a lot of sense to me that if your nervous system or your brain recorded an experience, like I can give you a benign example for people that don't, that have never really kind of thought

through what trauma actually means, why it's deeply personal, how it's a physical experience, not just a mental experience. So when I was, God, how old was I? I guess I was, I must have been in high school. We were driving to northern Michigan and it was a huge snowstorm and my mom was behind the wheel. And my dad and my brother were in the car in front of us. And there was a radio on. And all of a sudden the radio announcer said something about black ice.

And this truck pulled out to try to pass us. And right as he tried to pass us, you could see headlights coming on. And my mom said, oh, my God, hold on. Because the truck started to veer back in. So I remembered the words black ice. Oh, my God, hold on. And the next thing I remember, we were in the, it was like a SUV, the car rolled over, right, several times. And the experience of being in that car was like, imagine sitting in a dryer and you're sitting still like, but the clothes are tumbling around you, right?

And so like, you know, the McDonald's bag went flying past us and the dog went flying past us and all this stuff. And we, and I remember, even though I don't remember getting tumbled around, I remember this unbelievable sound that was like, of the car rolling and packing down the snow. Now, we ended up with the car on its side, and I was like thrown to the back seat, the dog was in the way back, but my mom was buckled in at the top.

We were fine, little shaked. up. I think my mom might have had a concussion. We survived. Nobody died. They flipped the car back over. We climbed him with my dad. Off we went. Now, here's what's interesting about that experience. I was never scared to drive ever. I didn't ever really even think about it. But it was a traumatic experience because my body remembers it. And it remembers it in a certain way. I don't ever think about the experience if I'm driving a car. That's not a trigger for my body to remember it. But if I walk to my mailbox in Boston, Massachusetts, after a freshly fallen snow, and I step on the snow and it goes, I feel like I'm back in that car, because that sound

is a trigger for my nervous system to remember. Now, that sound of me stepping on freshly fall in snow. My mom does that all day long in Michigan and doesn't think about the accident. But if somebody ever says the two words, black ice, around my mom, she feels like she's in that car accident because that's her trigger for her nervous system to remember it. So the reason why I tell that story is because I didn't understand trauma. I thought trauma was like for victims of war, that's what you experience if you, you, you, you know, do a tour of duty, somebody who has been the victim of a super violent crime.

I did not realize that trauma is a disruption in your nervous system that sends your brain into a mode where your brain like holds down the shutter on a camera and is like snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, all five senses recording everything it can possibly grab as a way to protect you in the future. when I started to understand that, oh my God, patterns of behavior get triggered by smell. They get triggered by sound. They get triggered by music. They get triggered by, and the same thing with patterns of thinking.

Now I had the missing piece to be able to start to truly reset not only my nervous system, but also the default patterns in my mind. And I haven't looked back since. But that was step one in terms of how I stop. the cascade of the what if this happens and what if that happens and what if this happens and what and what and what are they thinking and why didn't they invite me here and what and the universal thing that I started to replace the what if with was what if it all works out what if this is the best thing that ever happened to me what if this is really hard and it does suck that's not easy but it turns out to

be the best thing that I ever did it's not easy though is it no it's very simple to do but it's not easy. And it's not easy because you love patterns. Like we don't, it doesn't, that's not even the right way to say it. It's not easy because you're so used to thinking a certain way. And you, and as you write about, you know, one of the things I scribbled down was the, you said feelings and merely suggestions, ones you can ignore. But we go through life. No one's ever said that to us before. We go through life thinking that our thoughts are ourselves and that that is an instruction from ourselves. And that's my voice in my head telling me what to do. And I'm my job is just to obey.

So if it says, you know, this ice means danger, then I, you know, and we accept our thoughts. And when I've sat here with guests, you know, who have spent a lot of time working on the brain and understanding the difference between thoughts and are they true. And it appears to be that you can analyze a thought and accept or reject, which is a compelling. Well, the way that I put it, or I like to think about it is this. You can be two things at once. So you can have the feeling of being really frustrated with somebody. And that can be true.

And you can also love them at the same time. You can be jealous of somebody. And you can also allow that to inspire you at the same time. You can be afraid, which is true. And you can still find the willpower to push yourself or discipline to push yourself forward. You can be deeply in a state of grief, having experienced one of the biggest losses or betrayals of your life, and still experience a moment of joy as you're standing on the ocean and watching some bird dive into the sea.

Human beings are very complex, and when you start to understand you're not just one thing, it gives you freedom to ride the waves of feelings, to ride the waves of experience, and to kind of go down and go, oh, shit, this is a terrible thing, and know that you will be able to come out the other side of it. And so, you know, I think that emotions, yeah, they are suggestions, and that's one way to dismantle it. Another way to dismantle kind of the way that an emotion can hook you is to keep reminding yourself that it's temporary.

This wave of pissed offness, this wave of, of betrayal, this wave of fear, this wave of grief, this wave of frustration, this wave of feeling stuck, this wave of feeling hopeless, it's temporary. It will come and it will go. And when you realize that emotions are temporary, it also gives you perspective, right, to know that something better is coming. And that's going to help you be able to endure. whatever it is that you're enduring. So that was step one. I dug a little deeper on that step one phase,

which was that, you know, the kind of mental work. What was step two of your level four overcoming the trauma? So the first step was combating the thoughts in my head, seeing them, interrupting them. I'm not thinking about that. And then, you know, I went a little bit further and then started to figure out, well, if I think this, I'd rather be thinking this.

And so then I started working on replacing the thoughts so that the default became different. The next step, though, was a deeper understanding of anxiety and really studying it because I was tired of being anxious. I was tired of taking Zoloft. And look, Zoloft saved my life. I mean, I was on that drug for two and a half decades for crying out loud. One of my kids takes Zoloft, and it helped them climb out of a hole.

It is, I love medication. Like, I'm not here saying nobody should be on medication. it's the opposite. I think that it's self-harm not to take medication if you're in a hole, and that medication can serve as a ladder to help you climb out of it. But I was at a point where, you know, I'm 45 years old. I've been on this drug for a long time. I've been out teaching the five-second rule. I'm interrupting thoughts. I'm starting to feel like, wow, I actually have the ability to not think what I have always thought. I actually have the ability to shut that worry down. And so as I started to understand what anxiety really is,

so anxiety is a really important thing. Anxiety is an alarm system in your body. If you and I hop in a car and we drive off to have dinner and a truck pulls out, right, and cuts us off, and you immediately swerve, what do you feel in your body? It feels like something rising in my belly. Yeah. It's making me like a little burst of nervousness. Yeah. Yeah, your heart races, your armpits, sweat, your hands get clammy. You jerk the real, yeah, fight or flight. The alarm is sounding the alarm because there's danger. Well, what happens the second the truck pulls away in your body?

Well, it should go back to a calm state. Yeah. I should, my respiratory system should start to function as normal. My dietary tract should start to engage. We should start burning the carbs again in my belly. Yeah, exactly. And you should go back to normal. Exactly.

From a biological perspective. Yes, exactly. And the reason why that happens is because your mind has the vision of the truck pulling away, so your mind tells your body, threat is over. For a person that experiences anxiety over and over and over, like at their default state,

what's happened is you're standing in your kitchen and all of a sudden you feel that tidal wave that you and I felt when the truck pulled into our lane, but there's no threat. And so as the rush hits your body, your mind starts scrambling, looking for what in the kitchen is threatening me, and there's nothing there. And since you know the science of the body, all the blood,

when you go into fight or flight goes to your major organs, it leaves your digestive tract, your stomach starts to gurgle. Most people think butterflies means they're fucked. No, butterflies just means the blood left your stomach to go to your heart, and now your digestive chemistry has changed. That's all that's happening. It doesn't mean you're about to die, but we misread it because we don't understand it.

And so then once you go, oh, I'm fucked, my stomach hurts, and now I'm feeling, now your mind escalates it. And your mind starts freaking out. And when your mind starts freaking out, then your body freaks out more. And that's when the grand panic attack happens, which is an emergency break. It's designed to get you to stop thinking and to just remove yourself. And if you've ever seen somebody have a panic attack, they dart around a room, they can't breathe, and they feel like they've got to leave whatever situation they're in. This is how your body's designed to get you out of emergencies. The problem with somebody who gets a dysregulated nervous system

is you feel like a truck's about to pull in your lane all the time, but your brain can't understand why you feel that way because there is no truck. Your body just got stuck there. And so when I started to understand that, I found this really interesting piece of research from Harvard Medical School called reframing performance anxiety, where researchers wanted to know

since, you know, people really screw up tests when they get nervous, right? You know, you get nervous about a test, and then you can't focus, and so you blow it because you've got performance anxiety or athletes that really blow it when they get nervous before in a game. Well, medically speaking, there is no physiological difference

in your body state, physiologically speaking, between being nervous and being excited. Zero difference. So exactly what you talked about when the truck pulled into the lane in the example that I gave, that experience that made you feel nervous. When you feel excited, the same thing happens. Your heart races. The blood leaves your digestive track and goes up to your major organs.

Your armpits start to sweat. Your throat feels tight. Your hands get clammy. exact same physiological experience, excitement and nervous. The only difference between a situation that makes you excited and a situation that makes you nervous is what your brain is saying about what's happening. So if you're in a situation where you're like,

oh my God, I'm going to screw up this test, you know, this is going to be terrible, and you start working yourself up and I'm so nervous, I'm so nervous, I'm going to blow this interview, I'm so nervous, of course you're going to start sweating. Of course your heart's going to raise. If you and I are about to go see our favorite musician, let's say we have front row tickets,

Adele is going to play right here in London. We are right there. Oh, my God, she's about to come on stage. My heart's racing. My armpits are sweating. I'm excited because my brain's going, Adele's about to be there. So the body makes sense in the excitement situation.

So the researchers at Harvard wanted to know, well, given that physiologically, it's the exact same experience. Is it possible to trick the brain in a moment when you're nervous and make your brain think you're excited? And if you did trick your brain in a moment when you were nervous to believe that you were actually excited, would it impact your ability to perform?

And the answer is yes, you can trick your brain in a situation where you're nervous to believe that you're actually excited. And yes, it profoundly impacts your ability to perform. And so they put people in control groups in like karaoke competition and negotiation competition, a standardized test and a track meet. And the only difference between the groups is one group was taught in a situation that made them nervous to simply say, as dumb as this sounds, I'm so excited.

I'm so excited to run this race. I'm so excited to take this test. I'm so excited to get out there and sing. Even though they felt nervous, I'm so excited. and the people that were taught to say, I'm so excited, outperformed the people who had no tools. And the reason can be explained by chemistry and physiology and neurology. If you get too nervous and you start to get too worked up and your thoughts start to spin and your body stays in a fighter flight state, your brain releases cortisol.

and cortisol impacts your brain's ability to focus. So all your preparation goes out the window because you just blew it with the cortisol in your brain. When you say I'm excited, even if you feel nervous, your brain buys it and doesn't release cortisol, which allows you to focus on what you need to do. And so I started experimenting with this because I was deathly afraid of flying.

And at the age of 45, I'm now all of a sudden because of that TEDx talk starting to take off on the speaking circuit and I'm having to board planes and I'm being bombarded with these thoughts of I'm going to die, I'm never going to see my kids get married. Is my husband going to remarry? You know, will I make it? And so I said, I got to figure out a better way.

And so I stumbled into this project and I came up with this strategy. And this is freaking genius. I've taught it to millions of people. it's curing people's anxiety. I kid you not. Therapists are using this around the world. It is extraordinary.

So before you have to do something that makes you nervous, come up with anything that you can grab onto that makes you excited about what you're doing. So for example, with the example of flying, before I get on an airplane, I mean, I'm not afraid to fly at all anymore. But back in the day, back when I, eight years ago, before I would get on a plane, so I'm flying to London.

I would think of something I'm excited to do when I get to London. And so before I board that plane in Boston, I would think about coming here and meeting Stephen and getting to hang out with him. When I get on that plane and we're up in the air and all of a sudden we start bouncing around like, you know, something, yeah, like turbulence in the air

and my body goes, oh my God, I close my eyes and go, I am so excited. to see Stephen. This is going to be amazing. And what happens is that my mind goes, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Hold on. She's not nervous. She's excited to see Stephen. And your body literally settles. And your mind locks on to this thing that makes sense because I'm going to London. I'm going to see you. And if I'm going to see you, the plane obviously makes it. So there's nothing to worry. worry about. And it took me about five or six times of doing it, and I stopped having any kind of anxiety whatsoever about flying. So for most people, butterflies in your stomach is a trigger

that makes you believe something bad's about to happen. And I have a theory about it. The number one fear in kids is throwing up. Number two is their parents dying. But number one, according to pediatricians is the fear of throwing up because this is this intense moment of losing control. And so tons of little kids have an enormous fear of throwing up. And the trigger of your stomach rumbling or butterflies triggers that fear. And so I think there's been a lifetime negative association with having butterflies. What you did is you took a very common experience that's a negative trigger for people. So the physical sensation of your stomach being upset

triggers negative thought patterns, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, I'm in trouble, I'm in trouble, I'm in trouble. Yeah. And then that sticks. What you've done is you've hijacked it and you've labeled that feeling in your stomach as something positive. Well, you know what I just got really excited about? is that let's go back to the fact that your brain learns patterns.

And even though you may feel stuck, even though you may feel hopeless, you're not broken. You have patterns of thinking and patterns of behavior that are broken for where you are and where you want to go in life. And what's super exciting is that when you start to think about changing your life through the lens of just looking for patterns, breaking them and replacing them, it becomes less personal. And I believe, especially after what I've experienced with the high five habit, that, you know, there's a lot of research in habits, obviously, about how long it takes a new habit to stick. And it's anywhere from according to a lot of people, 21 days to 63 days, depending upon what you're looking at in terms of the mind, body, spirit.

I personally have a theory that if you don't like the new habit, you're never going to make it stick. Like, I don't like getting out of bed in the morning. I've been using the five-second rule, 5-4-3-2-1 for 13 years. Can we talk about that? I feel like we brushed over that a little bit. So this five-second rule, you released the book, I think, 2017,

called The Five-Second Rule, and it's all about, you know, well, you tell me what it's about where it came from. I know there was a rocket. You're watching a rocket on TV. and that was a little bit of the initial inspiration. But where did this come from and what is it? Well, so, you know, I think I alluded to earlier that it seems like my version of personal development

requires me to fall into a hole or dig one. And then I realize nobody's coming to rescue me and if I want to get out of the hole, I'm going to need to build a freaking ladder. And so at the age of 40, I found myself in a place that I just never, envisioned I would be. And that is I had my husband and I had three kids under the age of 10 and I was unemployed and my husband had been in the restaurant business with his best friend and the housing

crisis hit especially hit in the United States. And we found ourselves 800 grand in debt because we had secured the restaurant business like complete morons with our kids college fund and our house and every credit card and the home equity line and the cars and everything. And, and, that's great when your business is working. It's absolutely terrifying when it's not. And so I would wake up every morning, just pin to the bed with anxiety. And I became somebody that I barely recognized. I was screaming at Chris. I was drinking myself into the ground. The kids were missing the bus every day. I didn't have a job. I was hiding from my friends. I hadn't told my family what was going on. And, you know, the thing that's, that's, that's interesting about being stuck in life

is that the fact is you know what you need to do. That's the easy part. And if you don't know what you need to do to improve the situation and Google it, there's approximately a bazillion videos out there of people like you that have been in the exact same situation. They will walk you through how to, there are books you can buy, there are courses. The what you need to do is out there. It's the how. How the fuck do you make yourself do what you need to do when you are scared or overwhelmed or anxious or hopeless or depressed or any of the stuff that happens to you as a human? That's the $100 million question. And at the time, I didn't have the answer. I knew I needed to look for a job. I knew I needed to stop streaming at Chris.

I knew I needed to get the kids on the bus. I knew I needed to ask for help. I wasn't doing any of those things. I was stuck in broken patterns. And I didn't know any of the things that we're talking about right now. But one night, you know, I was sitting there and I was watching TV

and I was telling myself tomorrow morning, it's got to be the new you. I was giving myself that lame pep talk. Like, Mel, you've got to stop drinking. You have got to be nice to Chris. You've got to pull your shit together. You've got to look for a job. And by God, woman, when that alarm rings,

you cannot lay there like a human pot roast marinating and fear and staring at the ceiling, you have got to get out of bed, woman. And then all of a sudden, this is divine intervention. The rocket ship launches across a television scream, Stephen, and I say that's it. That's it. Tomorrow morning, when the alarm goes off, Mel Robbins, you're going to launch yourself out of bed like a rocket ship. You're going to move so fast, you're not going to be in that bed when that anxiety hits. Now, it was either God or Bourbon.

One of those two things gave me the idea, because it sounds dumb. Okay, Mel, you're going to beat anxiety by moving fast. That sounds great. Well, the very next morning, it was a Tuesday in February outside of Boston, Massachusetts, in 2008. The alarm went off. And I think a lot about this moment. Because if I hadn't done what I did that morning, my life would have gone in a totally different direction.

I'd probably be divorced. I'd probably be an alcoholic. My family would be torn apart. No idea what I'd be doing for a living or where I would be. And I profoundly believe that you are one decision away from a different life. And that happened to me on a February morning in 2008. The alarm rang. And as soon as the alarm rang.

alarm ring, I remembered the idea of launching myself out of bed. And then I did what psychologists call a bias toward thinking. And this window opens up when you start to think about what you need to do instead of doing what you need to do. It's this window of hesitation that's about five seconds long, a window of hesitation that defines your whole life. Inside this window of hesitation lives anxiety and procrastination and fear and imposter syndrome and overwhelm all patterns of thinking all patterns of feeling all patterns of behavior that get triggered in this five-second window of thinking about what you need to do because it's in the thinking that you go from being present to all the patterns kicking in and the coping mechanisms that you have and so for whatever reason

I started to think about getting up and all the shit started to come in, I don't feel like it, how's it going to help, I don't want to, for whatever reason, I just started counting backwards. Five, four, three, two, one. And I stood up. And I used it the next morning and the next morning. And by the third morning, I was kind of freaked out because I'm like, okay, this is working. This is weird. And I said, Mel, I made myself, a promise. If at any moment you know what you need to do but you don't

feel like it, just count backwards and let's just see what happens. And so I started using it Steve in this little count backwards technique, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. No idea why it's working, by the way. In any moment, I'd see Chris I'd want to kill him. 5, 4, 321,

all of a sudden I'm calm, I can speak to him from a more supportive place. Kids are irritating 5, 4, 3,21, take a breath, and now I can be the mom that I know I want to be. 5, 4, 321, I'm going out the door to exercise. 5, 4 321, I'm picking up the phone and I'm networking. 5, 4 321, I'm picking up the phone and calling my parents and asking for help. And slowly but surely, one decision at a time using the 5 second rule.

And the 5 second rule is very simple. The moment you have an instinct to move, you got to do it within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it. And counting backwards is critical. I now know why it works. when you count backwards 5,4, 3, 2, 1, you interrupt habit loops stored in your basal ganglia. And the counting backwards requires focus, so it awakens this sucker right here, your prefrontal cortex. It's referred to as a starting ritual in habit research, a cheat code for your brain. And basically, I used it in secret for three years because, I mean, what am I going to do?

Tell people you can count to five and you change your life. I mean, it sounds ridiculous. Plus, I was just trying to survive. I'm trying to, like, find a job and save my marriage and help my husband and make sure my kids are okay and start to pay our bills and make the ends meet. And that's what I was doing. And one thing led to another, and word got out about it and people started to write to me about it.

And it has now gone on to change the lives of millions of people. we know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from attempting suicide by counting backwards 5, 4, 3, 2.1. When I had a daytime talk show, an entire wing of nurses from an inpatient unit at a psychiatric hospital in Philadelphia came to my talk show and explained to me after the show that of all the tools that they have when they discard somebody from an inpatient commitment, that the five-second rule is the most effective thing that they have. for medication, obviously, but it's the most effective thing that they have because it's simple and you can remember it and anybody can use it and it works. And I think we make a huge mistake in life. We make the mistake of believing that because our problems are big or because our dreams are so big that somehow the solution to achieving those dreams,

dreams or to solving those problems must be enormous too. When in truth it's the opposite. The larger the problem, the smaller the solution. The bigger the dream, the smaller the actions are that you need to start taking. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.