I want to talk about what people experience when they try to implement the high five habit in their lives.

So we've talked about the fact that I believe every single human being has this habit of self-rejection.

You practice it every morning without even realizing it in this moment in the mirror in your bathroom, and then it gets carried throughout your entire day as you You beat yourself up as you focus on what's going wrong, as you point out the negative, as you pick yourself apart, as you hide in the back of group photos, as you stay silent. These are all habits of self-rejection. And so what we know for sure is that when... And I ask people, just please give us five days. Just do this for five days because something extraordinary happens within five days. We have 126,000 people from 91 countries going through a five-day challenge that I call the high five challenge. They have completed the challenge. We have not had a single person out of 126,000 people report that it didn't work. And so what you need to know is that when you stand in front of the bathroom here, you put your toothbrush down and you stand with your sofa a second, it will feel weird.

And that's good.

It should feel weird because in my opinion, That is evidence that your brain is now plowing a new neuro response instead of operating the habit loop of rejecting yourself. Just like I'm a right-hand or if I lost my hand today and I had to write with my left hand, it would feel weird. That's a sign that I'm learning something new. So if it's weird, good. What we notice is that there's only two reactions that people have to doing it the first time, raising up their hand. The first reaction is So either a lot of people laugh, that I believe is the cortisol. A lot of people cry in a very positive way. And the crying is really good because the way that everybody describes it is it's like a decade or decades of emotional release of finally getting it. You just woke up and you have come home to yourself. And you realize how long you have been longing for that connection and acceptance and seeing from yourself. Is there something that you want to add to that positive thing before we go negative?

Can I show you some models? It's going to make it super easy. He has a brain and a skull, and he Here is another model of the brain and body. My audience is very familiar with what I'm going to say, but there's always new audiences watching, so I'm going to explain it again. Now, as you've explained that to me, as you said those words to us, that was a sound wave, electromagnetic light waves. Our mind receives that energy, and then the psychological part of our mind does a think, feel, choose, think, feel, choose, think, feel, choose at 400 billion actions per second, which is a lot to process what you've just said. Now, Because it's coming from your place of total love and kindness and absolute passion to share this with people, so everything about you, all the photons you're generating, as Einstein would talk about it, are coming from a place of absolute love. They're coming from your wired for love nature. So that whole message is being received by all of us in this incredibly healthy way. So it comes in, but now this is what happens. It comes in your words into the brain, So up in the brain, the brain responds on a neurophysiological level, a neurochemical level, an electromagnetic level, quantum level, and a genetic level.

Your words at the speed of 10 to the 27 are busy converting into little amino acids that group together to form proteins and our vibrations inside of those proteins, vibrating in the region of 528 hertz and above, which is super healthy. Every concept you're giving us is vibrating in its own unique way. It's your own unique protein. By the end of this however long conversation, people are going to have 2,000 or 3,000 plus concepts that they would have taken away from you. Each of those would have grown into a tree like this. In your In your brain, you're literally growing trees that I call thoughts. Thoughts look like trees. As neuroscientists, we talk about the thoughts in the brain having an arbor-like structure, tree-like structure. So all of us at this moment are taking your and my words and growing this into these trees. But notice a tree, and I'm going to use this little pot here. A tree is planted first with the seed and then roots. So our words are the root system. And it's the same thing, proteins and whatever. So this is a thought tree about the conversation with Mel about the high five.

The tree is called the high five. The detail is the conversation. Now, what you and I are saying is the source. The memories of this thought tree, there's source memories and there's interpretation memories. You'll see the significance of this now relating, and I'm I'm labeling the point because this is why the high five is just so important. I'm using this conversation as an example. The thought is made of memories, root memories, and branch memories. Memories are not the same as thoughts. Exactly like a mind, mind is not the same as brain. Mind It's the action, it's the processing, it's the electromagnetic, it's the gravitational field. You have your own gravitational field around you and through you. An electromagnetic field is different to mine. I can't take yours, you can't take mine. But when we interact, we enhance each other. If we are in conflict, we don't enhance each other. We cause brain damage in each other. As humans, we are wired to enhance. We're wired for love, which is what the high five is helping yourself do personally. But the collective response that you're creating is an enhancement process. But coming back to this, what's actually happening in the brain is that we are all building this root system of the source, which is what you're saying and my responses to you.

But every single listener and viewer is interpreting this immediately in a parallel... It happens immediately, simultaneously The root above the ground, the memories above the ground, the branch, memories, and leaves, and trees, whatever you want, whatever shape it is, are the interpretation of what you're saying. Every person is hearing the same thing, but he's seeing it in their own different way. Applying it to their life in their own different way. Now, they are busy building an insurance policy in their brain. This high five content is a neural structural change. I studied neuroplasticity. I was one of the first in my field in the '80s when they told us that you can't change the brain. Now it's accepted fact. We are being neuroplasticians. We're being brain surgeons, neuroplasticians, historians, archeologist, all that to build this conversation. In other words, this conversation has created a structural change in your brain that is a healthy structural change that if people go get your book, if they get into follow you, whatever, they are then going to stabilize this. But they will lose everything that we are saying if they don't stabilize this and turn it into a habit.

And a habit takes 63 days minimum, not 21. Most people think that it's 21. So I'm just seeing the whole audience, if you want to benefit from what Mel and I are talking about now, you need to take this. You need to actually get the book, get my neurocycle app in my book, and learn how to apply this over the 63 days, because Because there's very little research showing how long it takes to create a neural network like this that is sustainable. We're doing this now. But if you don't apply this within 24 hours to 48 hours, most of this beautiful tree would denature and become heat energy. What a waste. Then they know, I heard something that Mel spoke about, something about high-fiving, but it's something good for me. Then they won't really apply it and they won't get the benefit that you're desperate for people and passionately desperate for people to get. Because when humans are functioning as themselves, we won't see what we see in the world that we have today. You won't see this mess in conflict, et cetera, et cetera. So that's getting super philosophical. Now, that's healthy. When you spoke about the complaining habit, I have to grab my toxic tree.

Give me one second.

Yeah, let me see it. I'm imagining like a dead, like, yes. Okay, great. Yes. This is so good. You know what I love about this? Is that I love the high five because it's a physical thing that's so simple, that has this profound shift throughout your mind, body, spirit, and that think, feel, choose, loop.

I love the visuals that you're bringing to the table because the second that you said, I got to get my toxic or negative, I can't remember what word you're, I'm like, I imagine a dead tree.

There you go. There it is, Mel. There's that. And these are built into neurons on the brain. So this is what... These are the dendrites on it. Everyone's seeing what a neuron looks like. And I think if you don't just Google it, if you don't know what a neuron looks like, these branches here are where memory is stored, not in the synapses. The synapses are short-term memory. So as we're speaking, you get synaptic action, and then the actual memory is stored here. And so these are the dendrites. So they look like trees. So now here, this is a healthy conversation. It's a healthy tree. The proteins fall correctly, the quantum energy is correct, the neurochemicals are correct, your whole neurophysiology, endocrine system, immune system, everything's happy. But this is a toxic reaction. When we have this wake up in the morning and you talk about the patterns that most people are waking up and saying, I hate myself, I'm not good enough, the FOMO, the FOPO, all those people pleasing, all that, I can't do this. You see the saggy boops.

It's all the same thing, by the way.

There you go. It's this thing. The stuff, the statements that we're making about ourself are this part of the tree, the interpretation. If we look at our interpretation, we can then track the interpretation of why am I saying this about myself? That's the root system. Like the root system of this conversation is our words. There's a source. There's also a source to the complaint. Why are you looking at yourself like that? This causes brain damage because as you said in the beginning about how we've got, you said very beautifully about our neural network and our brain and body are designed to celebrate. That's the wide for love concept I spoke about. So this, streetens survival. This causes brain damage. This I hate myself stuff, activates the immune system in the same way that COVID does. In other words, there's an immune response to this. Tv lymphocytes, B lymphocytes, macrophages, all going to that site, creating inflammation. And if you keep on 63 days later, nine weeks later, 18 weeks later, a year later, you're still doing this. This thing, whatever you think about the most, has grown. This is enormous, and it's in your non-conscious mind.

Your subconscious mind is a bridge between the conscious and the non-conscious. The non-conscious is where everything is stored. In the non-conscious mind, it's gravitational fields. In the brain, it's trees. In the body, it's a change in your gene code. This is how powerful this stuff is. When you high five, you are actually drawing up this toxic thing that's been there for 9 weeks, 18 weeks, 5 years, 25 years, 40 years. From neuroscience, we know that as soon as you draw something up and you become aware of it, you weaken it. It becomes malleable and changeable. If I don't change it and I walk away from the bathroom mirror thinking, Oh, gosh, I hate myself, boom, it goes back stronger. So tomorrow it comes back even stronger. This is in the non-conscious mind, which works 24/7. It's the most powerful and intelligent part of you, and it's driving everything that you do. So how I see the high five, and I don't want to take any of your time because we want to hear you, not me, is the high five is breaking that. It's pulling this non-conscious view of myself out. You know what it is?

You gave me an idea.

Okay, go for it.

It's an act.

It's an ax. There we go. It's an ax. It's an ax. It's an ax that's not only chopping it down, but it's got to dig the soil out because you've got to get the root system. When you take a weed out of the garden, you can't chop off the head. You have to get the whole weed upend it. So the high five is preparing you to do the work of actually getting it out. It's putting that spade or ax in your hand. Love it. That's exactly what it is. Every day when you do this, you are allowing yourself to bring your identity to the surface, which then drives every other part of your mind, which then drives your brain and your body, which then changes your lifestyle. So this is a step into reversing that terrible statistic of people dying younger. Yeah.

And one of the reasons why it's so powerful is because it does not require you to say anything. The positive programming is already associated with the physical action. Because you've never high five somebody and thought, I hate you and you're worthless, your brain cannot actually Neurologically, it is impossible to think that thought as you high five yourself. Impossible.

And that's so true. So scientifically, to back you up there, it's the Wired for Love Nature. So that's built in. I spoke about an insurance policy earlier on. A Wired for Love Nature is an insurance policy. I talk about it as a wise mind. In the depths of the middle of this forest of all these trees and some of that look at this, some look like that, there is this beautiful green forest, and that's where the high five resides in that forest, in that gravitational field as a resilience network in your brain and in your genes. It's all over the place. It's a recognition of truth.

Yeah. I think that's why people cry, is because you, by high-fiving yourself, you are reconnecting with your true nature.

And that is a powerful spiritual experience.

Speak more about that. That is so true, because I want you to speak about that, and then I'll throw some science in afterwards, because that is so huge.

Yeah, I apologize for interrupting you. I get so excited about this, particularly since you and I are free styling. It's amazing. And I can't wait to get together. We got to an event for people or something and just really- Yeah, that's it for sure.

We can sit there with all of our little props and that we have to. We promise you people this is going to happen.

Yes. So it was interesting because the very first morning that I did this in April of 2020, during a very overwhelming moment in life, when I first did it, my immediate reaction was to laugh. And then I laughed. I realized now I laughed because of the dopamine. But I also laughed because on the surface, standing there in my underwear, high-fiving my... It just seems so stupid and pathetic when you just first hear it. But I will say, even though lightning didn't strike and heaven didn't open and the angels didn't sing that first morning, but I did feel this little flip. I felt almost like the high five had almost turned a light switch on. Because I noticed my mood went from feeling energetically down, defeated, overwhelmed to all of a sudden this shift in energy. I didn't even think these thoughts, but I would describe the thoughts like, Okay, come on now. You got a roof over your head. You can handle this. You've been in way worse places. It was like that, here we go, energy. But I'll tell you, it was the second morning where where it went from this funny thing that I did to something profound and deeply moving.

And so I woke up the second morning, and You talked about cortisol levels, and I believe that you'll have to tell me if this is true or not, that your cortisol levels tend to be higher in the morning. A lot of us experience a higher level of anxiety in the morning since we're anticipating that the day is going go bad. So a lot of us already, whether it's because of past trauma or it's because of just what's going on in your life or because it's a habit to wake up and feel this level of anxiousness, I woke up feeling overwhelmed, feeling defeated. I use the five-second rule, five, four, three, two, one.

I get out of bed.

I start walking to the bathroom. And this is when the high five habit became something bigger. I realized as I was walking to the bathroom that I was feeling something that I hadn't ever felt in my entire adult life. And this is what I was feeling. You know how when you are going to meet a really dear friend that you just adore, and you're about to walk into the cafe, what do you feel in that moment when you're about to walk in and see you really adore?

Anticipation, peace.

Yeah.

Excitement.

Exactly.

I realized I was feeling that about seeing myself.

Wow. That's beautiful.

I've been excited to see an outfit or a haircut. I don't ever recall as an adult feeling excited about seeing the human being, Mel Robbins.

Oh, wow. This is amazing. This is core to who we are as humans, and we've forgotten to see that in ourselves in this very fast technological, physically-based world where you got to get something from outside in to make you feel better, which is how we've been almost programmed. What you're saying is the absolute opposite of that.

Yeah.

That is profound.

It was a profound feeling.

And as I turned the corner and stepped into the bathroom, the profound nature of what was unfolding was hitting me. And it was that second morning realizing that I was excited to see the human being, Mel Robbins, that I realized, oh, my gosh, all this time, it never occurred to me that there's another human being in the bathroom standing there in the mirror. And I believe that represents your soul and your spirit and who you are.wise mind. Yes, your wise mind. And as I stood there and I had this moment of really just being with the human being Mel Robbins, it was profound. And I had... That was the second morning was the morning that I cried when I high-fived myself. And it was as if years and years of feeling isolated or feeling not good enough or feeling invisible or feeling whatever, the pain that we all feel at times in the human experience, that the high five became a recognition of just how much I have lived through and how much I needed and deserved support and encouragement, just like every human being does. And so that's when it really started to crack open.

And it's also something that when I notice something, and that is this, you can stand there and be with your sofa a minute. And when you first start to do it, particularly if you're somebody who has a hard time looking at yourself or you hate so much about where you're at in life right now or what's happened to you or whatever it may be, you can be thinking and feeling all those things. But I noticed in that second morning, that the second you go to raise your arm, your mind actually goes silent. The science says this works. Here's that very first high five I shared on social media. So for those of you just joining us in chapter one, I cover the story of the high five habit. And I had been using it myself to send myself into the day with the encouragement and the love and the support that we all need and deserve. And about a couple weeks after doing it myself, I posted this selfie. You can see I've got my bed head. I've just rolled out of bed. I got my glasses on. I've got my retainer in. I don't even tell everybody.

I don't even tell everybody to post a photo. But what happens next is extraordinary. What happens next is people around the world start posting within an hour photos of themselves, high-fiving themselves. Notice there are no instructions in the photo I just showed you. Just me standing there, thankfully, in more than my underwear. My retainer is still in. My bed head is intact, and I'm giving myself a high five in the mirror. In less than an hour, people around the world started tagging me in photos of themselves high-fiving the mirror. I was stunned. Men, women, children, grandparents, before work, before school, before the day started, people of all ages and backgrounds were taking a moment to celebrate themselves in the mirror. That was just day one. Little did I know how fast the high five habit would spread or how it would change so many people's lives by changing how they see themselves. Here are a few of the photos from just the first few days. Look at all these beautiful people, everybody. Isn't that amazing? Men, women, people with their kids, kids doing it alone. Isn't this awesome? People of all ages, backgrounds, religions, shapes, sizes.

It's incredible. When you look at the images of people high-fiving themselves, and here, I'm going to give you some images. Look at that, people high-fiving themselves. When you look at the images of people high-fiving themselves, there's an energy and enthusiasm in everybody who tries it. In one of the images, the person that you see, and the person is actually on this page I'm showing you right now, in one of the images, so one of the people that you're looking at right now is in a bathroom at a domestic violence shelter. It is a very powerful reminder that no matter where you are, what you are facing or how little or much you have, you still have you. A high five is going to cost you nothing, and what it gives you is priceless. A high five in the mirror to yourself gives you a moment of self validation. The high five is proof that you are still standing, you're still smiling, and that no matter what happens today, you have your own back. Now, Standing there on my own, I love seeing all the photos of everybody around the world who started high fiving themselves because it made me think, maybe this high five thing isn't so cheesy after all.

And then it dawned on me, maybe I'm not the only one who needs a high five every single day. Now, this is big. You may want to take notes. And if you have questions, ask them in the comments. If we have time today, we're going to jump into them. So I did what I always do when I wanted to understand something. I started to dig for answers. Why is a simple high five to yourself so powerful and contagious? And the first stop, it's where I always go. I started to talk to real people who are high fiving themselves. I reached out to the folks who had tagged me in their high five photos online, folks just like you. And those initial conversations, they confirmed something incredible. And something really cool was happening for all of us. When you give yourself a high five, it's impossible to think something terrible or crappy or negative about yourself. I want you to try it because it's true. When you look at yourself in the mirror and you raise your hand in celebration, you can't think, God, I look fat. You can't think, I'm a loser. You can't say, I'm a horrible person.

You can't say, I hate my stomach. It's impossible. In fact, before I got on this broadcast, my daughter bought me some new foundation, and I guess it's the very glowy foundation that all the kids are wearing right now. And when I saw myself in the camera, I immediately had a negative reaction I was like, I look ridiculous. I'm super shiny. But when I go like this, I can't even think about my foundation. It's neurologically impossible for you to criticize your appearance or focus on the things that you don't like or or focus on the things that make you feel insecure or focus on the things that you want to fix. It's neurologically impossible because for your entire life, this hand motion has always meant something positive. You have never high five somebody and said, you suck. You've never high five somebody and said, I hate you. You've never high five somebody and said, you're going to have a terrible day. So neurologically, when you go to high five yourself, it is impossible for your brain to do do anything but cheer for you. It's the coolest thing in the world because the science is already in your head.

We're just aiming it back at your own reflection. How amazing is that? And did I mention this is free? We are unlocking programming and science that's already in your body. How cool is that? And this is because you have, for your entire lifetime, had a positive association with giving someone else a high five. As soon as you raise your hand to high five yourself, your subconscious mind flips into a positive mode and silences the inner critic in your head. Now, here's another thing about this high five habit and starting your day with a high five. It's also impossible to high five yourself while worrying about your to do list or a work email or something you have to do right now. That's because a high five is a gut check for right now. It snaps you into the present moment. I want you to think about that. There's There's nothing worse than going to give somebody a high five and you miss each other's hands and you're like, Oops, I missed, and it's like a weird slap, right? What do you do? Think about it. Put it in the comments. If you got to high five somebody and you miss each other's hands, what do you immediately do?

You're like, Oh, we got to do that over. We got to do that over. Of course, right? Why? Well, the reason why is to have a great high five. You've got to concentrate on the action and the intention. You got to be fully present. The same thing happens when you give one to yourself. And I want to stop there for a minute. This has been a very profound moment in every single podcast. I want to break apart something about the way you start your day. How you start your day is everything. The mood in your first thing in the morning, where your thoughts are, where your focus is, the first couple habits that you have. So many of you have a morning routine, right? Put in the comments, what is part of your morning routine to set yourself up for a great day? You probably are writing that you meditate or you pray, or you journal, or you exercise, or you set an intention for how you're going to show up today. Yes, those are all incredible things. But do you actually take a moment where you get present with the human being in the mirror?

Or when you're standing in front of the mirror, is that time spent picking yourself apart or or what I'm finding to be even more common is, do you ignore yourself? If you're somebody who can't even look at yourself in the mirror, and I've talked to some incredibly successful people, like Ed Millet. I don't know if any of you all know the best-selling author, super successful businessman, Ed Millet, followed by millions of people, when we talked about the high five habit on his podcast and show, he admitted that he doesn't look at himself in the mirror. A guy that's that successful, if this is you, if you're disgusted by yourself or you can't look at yourself in the mirror, it's hard for you because you've criticized your sofa so long. I want you to know you're not alone. And the high five habit is so important because you can't actually do it if you're not present with yourself. And so in one action, we are pulling together dozens and dozens and dozens of research studies. We are pulling together all kinds of physiology and neurology and psychology research, and we're aiming I'm bringing it back at you to send you in your day with a boost of dopamine, with a surge from your nervous system.

We're going to get into the science. We're in Chapter 2, if you're just joining us. I'm Mel Robbins. I'm reading from my best-selling number one self-help book in the world right now. It's actually number one in Canada on Amazon. We are in the top 30 books of all of Amazon. We are the number one audiobook in self-help, the number two audiobook, period, in the world right now. This is all in the last six days because the The high five habit is spreading like wildfire because it is full of simple tools and the research that prove how learning how to support, see, encourage, love, have compassion for, and be kind to yourself is actually the secret to everything. It's a secret to motivation. It's the secret to confidence. It's the secret to inspiration. It's the secret for those of you on LinkedIn to getting ahead at work and to being a service-based leader, to being more impactful. It's a secret to everything. And Right now, if you really are honest about your morning routine, it includes a really ugly habit where you stand in front of the mirror in your bathroom at the sink and you pick yourself apart or you ignore yourself.

Simply forcing yourself to start your day with a high five breaks that habit because the high five will silence the critic, and it forces you to be present with yourself. It forces you to look at yourself with compassion, with encouragement, and that is a It's a life-changing thing. This is big. You may want to take notes. So I did what I always... Oh, I already read that part. Okay, where am I? Oh, I'm down here. I'm already on page 19 for those of you who are reading along. I know a lot of you love to get your books out and read along. And for those of you that keep saying that the independent bookstores in your neighborhood are sold out of the book, don't worry, we're restocking. You can find it online. Keep supporting the book. I appreciate it because I'm here reading it for free, because there are a lot of people right now that are really hurting that can't afford a copy of the book or they're somewhere in the world where they cannot find a copy to buy. Thank you for all of your support. And I'm going to be here every day, as long as social media is up, reading this to you cover to cover.

Now, the other thing that the high five does is that the habit of worrying that normally hijacks you when you start brushing your teeth, like when you start thinking, how am I going to finish that presentation in time or get my mom to her doctor's appointment, that spiral where you also So as you're brushing your teeth, immediately put your attention on everything that you need to do for everybody else, instead of using that moment as a moment of intentional reflection about you. The second that you go to raise your hand, you silence that mental death spiral. And the focus on you and what matters to you begins because the high five says, I see you. I'm with you. Let's do this. There's a cool game to play today. I know life is hard. I'm still going to be here supporting you. That's why this is so powerful. The high five, it's not a gesture, it's self-validation. So I don't care if you're standing in your bathroom in your boxer shorts or a ratty robe, your exercise gear or your birthday suit. When your hand raises to the mirror, you're going to feel seen, heard, and appreciated.

Plus, as soon as your hand hits that mirror, your mood isn't the only thing that shifted. Your perspective gets a shift, too. It makes you think about what bigger game you want to play today. Right now, you know what you do as you stand in front of the mirror? You march through your to-do list, which is why you're tanking mentally. You start to focus on everyone and everything else. When you practice the high five habit and send your day into your day with a high five, five. You think about what you want to do for yourself. How do you want to show up today? What do you want to be? And what is the one personal project that you need to make progress on for yourself? You know, this Every moment of intentional reflection is more powerful than you think. Recent research from Harvard Business School has found that taking a moment to reflect on your work improves job and performance. It helps you be more effective, and it makes you feel more motivated. It impacts everything from your confidence in achieving your goals to making you more productive, all from a simple moment of reflection every single morning in the mirror.

Now, as the months passed and I posted more and more about making the high five every morning a habit, It began to rapidly spread around the world. In fact, if you're watching this and you can see highfivechallenge. Com, we've got almost 100,000 people from 91 countries joining in a free five-day challenge. It's hosted by an app for free called Growth Day. If you go to highfivechallenge. Com, get in there because I am coaching you every day. We're giving you journaling tools and science-backed journaling prompts. Everybody in there is highfiving each other and cheering each other on and sharing their insights as they're breaking through the self doubt and the stuckness and the low energy that we all feel after the last 18 months. And they're learning the simple things to take control of their life. We've got kids in it, senior citizens in it. It doesn't matter what language you speak. You should be in it because you deserve support. And this is something I promise you need right now. Where am I? As the months passed and I posted more about making the high five a habit, it began to rapidly spread around the world.

Every day, I heard from people about the impact it was having and how they were teaching it to their coworkers, their kids, their friends and families. Companies took notice and began to ask me if I would speak to their teams about it. Over the past year, I was the most book keynote speaker for virtual events because I speak about change and resilience and simple science-back tools that real people can use to face the ups and downs of life and work. I presented the research and tools in this book to nearly half a million people in corporate speaking events around the world, to businesses in every single vertical, everybody. And I'm absolutely certain that this simple habit and the mindset tools in this book will change your life because it changes you. And research backs it up.

You called me the master of motivation, and I think motivation is complete garbage.

So maybe we should start there.

That is a perfect place to start.

So I I totally agree with you.

But why do you say that? I do 100 %. Now, I said that in the spirit of, I know what you're trying to do. So it is meant with absolute reverence.

But why do you say that it's garbage?

Well, and we'll talk a lot about this, but I think it's garbage because at some point, we all bought into this lie that you got to feel ready in order to change. We bought into this complete falsehood that At some point, you're going to have the courage. At some point, you're going to have the confidence. And it's total bullshit, frankly. Are we allowed to swear on this? Absolutely. Okay. It's complete garbage. And so there are so many people in the world, and you may be watching this right now, and you have these incredible ideas, and what you think is missing is motivation. And that's not true, because the way that our minds are wired and the fact about human beings is that we are not designed to to do things that are uncomfortable or scary or difficult. Our brains are designed to protect us from those things because our brains are trying to keep us alive. And in order to change, in order to build a business, in order to be the best parent aren't the best spouse, to do all those things that you know you want to do with your life, with your work, with your dreams, you're going to have to do things that are difficult, uncertain, or scary, which sets up this problem for all of us.

You're never going to feel I like it. Motivation is garbage. You only feel motivated to do the things that are easy, right?

Why do you think that is?

Oh, I know exactly why that is. Because I've studied this so much, because for me, one of the hardest things to I wanted to figure out was why is it so hard to do the little things that would improve my life? And what I've come to realize, and what we'll talk a lot about today, is that the way that Our minds are designed is our minds are designed to stop you at all costs from doing anything that might hurt you. And the way that this all happens is it all starts with something super subtle that none of us ever catch. And that is with this habit that all of us have that nobody's talking about. We all have a habit of hesitating. We have an idea, you You're sitting in a meeting, you have this incredible idea, and instead of just saying it, you stop and you hesitate. Now, what none of us realizes that when you hesitate, just that moment, that micro moment, that small hesitation, it sends a stress signal to your brain. It wakes your brain up, and your brain all of a sudden goes, Oh, wait a minute. Why is he hesitating?

He didn't hesitate when he put on his killer spiky sneakers. He didn't hesitate with the really cool track pants. He didn't hesitate with the NASA T-shirt. Now he's hesitating to talk. Something must So then your brain goes to work to protect you. It has a million different ways to protect you. One of them is called the Spotlight effect. It's a known phenomenon where your brain magnifies risk. Why? To pull you away from something that it perceives to be a problem. And so you can truly trace every single problem or complaint in your life to silence and hesitation. Those are decisions. And what I do and what's changed my life is waking up and realizing that motivation is garbage. I'm never going to feel like doing the things that are tough or difficult or uncertain or scary or new. So I need to stop waiting until I feel like it. Number two, I am one decision away from a totally different marriage, a totally different life, a totally different job, a totally different income, a totally different relationship with my kids. Not like one decision, I'm divorcing you in the marriage example, but one decision on...

You You could be having a conversation with your spouse, and you feel your emotions rise up, and within a tiny window, those emotions can take over and can impact how your marriage goes. Or you can learn how to take control of that micromoment and make a decision to act in a way that actually shifts your marriage. Your life comes down to your decisions. And if you change your decisions, you will change everything. The thing that's so difficult for most of us is how, when you're alone and you turn off this show, do you push through the excuses, the habits, the fears, and the actual physical constraints that you have in your life right now so that you can make the pivot? And so I often say that I am not a what speaker or a why speaker, I'm a how. And that there's already incredible information about what you can do and why you should do it. And I find that the place I get stuck is, Okay, well, that's great. I do a lot of thinking, but how do I get out of here and make it happen?

Our thoughts are our biggest killers of our dreams.

Totally.

They're the biggest killers or our biggest cheerleaders. And if we don't know how to really, I don't know, not manipulate them, but to really hone in on them, then we can have a messed up life. I've gone through many years of self-destruction growing up just because I didn't know how to manage the thoughts. I was never educated on it, really, on how to not control it, but I don't know, what is it? What is it? What is it? Yeah, not control it, but what is the word I'm looking for?

Well, see, I talk about it this way. I like to simplify things because it makes it easier for me. I'm almost 50 for crying out loud. There's only so much that you can remember when you get to be...

When he's 33, that's a whole different ball game.

But I think about your brain as being in two modes. Two modes to your brain that you need to know about. There's autopilot. We've all experienced that. You drive to work and get there and you're like, Who drove the car? Who Oh, my God. I don't even remember driving the car here. Well, you did, Lewis. You drove the car. But the thing is, is that you were in the mode of your brain that's called autopilot. Well, what is autopilot? Autopilot is the interior part of your brain. You'll hear neuroscience scientists and psychologists talk about the basal ganglia. Very important thing to understand is that there's a part of your brain that its entire job is basically to execute your habits. Habits, big fancy word, means something very simple. Behaviors that you repeat without even thinking about it. When you pull your pants on in the morning, I guarantee you, you either put your left or your right leg in first. You have to stop and think about which one it is, don't you? But not when you're putting your pants on. Because that behavior is what researchers call a habit loop. It gets encoded as a closed loop system right here.

Now, the problem for most of us is that half of the day we're on autopilot, and that's not me making a guess. That's what researchers that study habits and study psychology say, that half of your day, you're basically checked out and you're on autopilot. When you're checked out and you're on autopilot, any behavior pattern that you repeat can take over. And guess what are behavior patterns that we repeat? Thinking patterns. So self-doubt, worry, procrastination, overthinking, analysis/paralysis, fear. Those are all thinking patterns that are habits. One of the most important things that I want people to understand is that you're actually not a worrier. You have a habit of worrying. Big difference. You're not a procrastinator. You have a habit of procrastinating. Big difference. And when you understand that any behavior pattern, whether it is a thinking pattern, like you doubt yourself all the time, or you get trapped upstairs, noodling everything and you can never get started, or Whether it's a behavior pattern like you drink too much, or you snap at your kids, or you micromanage your team. Every one of those behavior patterns and thinking patterns can actually be interrupted and replaced using science.

Now, let's talk about the second part of the brain. Drive. That's this puppy right here. This is what you want. This is your prefrontal cortex. Drive is the mode where you're in charge of your thoughts. It's where you are fully awake, you are present, and you are driving your thoughts and actions. When you're doing that, your prefrontal cortex is active. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that you need in order to learn new behavior, in order to do something difficult, in order to do something uncertain, in order to do strategic thinking. I'm going to give you an example. I'm a writer. If I were to try to write with my left hand, like Louis is going to torture me and tie my hand behind my back and make me do this, I could do it. It would look like I writing with my foot. If Louis came up to me and said, Hey, Mel, you want some bulletproof coffee? I'd be like, Louis, I'm trying to concentrate.

I can't do this.

My prefrontal cortex would be El Fuego because it is firing on all cylinders to communicate to my hand new behavior. So the thing that's cool about that is that you can use a simple trick. The moment you feel yourself hesitate, the moment you've got one of those moments where you know that you need to... This is that moment that Louis talks to you about where you got to step outside of your comfort zone and you've got to lean into your passion, and you've got to really take some risks, and you got to feel the fear, and you got to do it anyway. That's the moment where you just woke up, and now you got a decision to make. Are you going to drift back into the habits or are you going to awakeen your prefrontal cortex and drive forward and focus and do something new? The work that I've been doing and speaking about is all about the five-second rule, which is a trick that I invented by that helps you manually switch, no joke, your brain. It turns off and interrupts the part of the brain that is where all your habits and your behavior patterns are encoded, and it awakeens your prefrontal cortex, which in five seconds flat allows your brain to help you change.

Anyway, I was rambling on and on because you went on this thing about how your patterns can be destructive and nobody teaches us, and that's absolutely right. What I want everybody to to get out of this conversation between us is that you cannot control how you feel. You cannot control what triggers you and the fact that you may rise up with anger, you may rise up with self-doubt, you may have anxiety, fill your body. But you can always control what you think and how you behave. We spend way too much time trying to focus on manipulating how we feel about things and not enough time practicing the skills of controlling your behavior and your thoughts.

Because if you can control your behavior and your thoughts and the way you feel, it'll be different.

A hundred %. And a lot of us are sitting around waiting to feel ready, waiting to feel courageous, waiting to feel confident, waiting for the right time. And that's not ever coming. Ever. You're not going to change your life up here. You only change it through action. And so to me, I did this interview with your friend Tom, and we talked about how motivation is garbage, and that somebody meamed it and went crazy. The point that I was trying to make is this, is that, yeah, motivation is great if you feel motivated, but it's garbage, and it's a losing bet to wait to feel ready. Because your body's not designed that way, and neither is your brain. I want everybody to understand that, first of all, you can't control the things that trigger you and the fact that you're going to feel afraid, and you're you're going to feel doubt and you're going to feel uncertain. But you can always interrupt that feeling and take control in the moment and actually shift what you're thinking and shift how you behave. Yeah.

The bigger the dream, the more fear you're going to have. Even if you feel like you've conquered the fear of something, In order to grow, you've got to take on some new challenge. There's going to be uncertainty. There's going to be some stress, or there's going to be some worry, or there's going to be some ego checking, and there's going to be some identity crisis. There's always going to be this fear that could Always. Always. Do you feel like once you'd mastered this, that you have no more fear? Me? Yeah.

No, the fear still comes, but I have 100% control of what I think and do. One of the things that is important for me to put on the table is that a lot of times people look at where you are now. And so they'll see me on television or they'll see that TED Talk, or maybe you'll be in an audience of 20,000 people in the American Airlines Center, and I'm on stage, you're like, wow, that chick must have just been more in confidence. I hate her. The fact is, that's not at all how I was. When I was 19, I started having crazy panic attacks, and they got so bad that I took medication, and medication was a godsend for me. I took Zoloff for two decades. When I had our first daughter, who is now 17 years old, the postpartum depression was so bad that they put me on Adavan, which turns you into a zombie, and I could not be left alone with her. When it comes to self-doubt and to how we can torture ourselves with our thoughts, boy, have I lived that nightmare. As I started to use the five-second rule, which we're going to get into, and everything about my life changed, because when people first learn the rule, what you're going to learn, what you're going to start doing is you're going to start using the rule to push yourself to do things that are annoying.

You're going to push yourself to get up on time. You're going to push yourself to work on your business plan. You're going to push yourself to make calls that are scary. You're going to push yourself to get to the gym. You're going to push yourself to speak up more at work. You're going to push yourself to put the booze down. Behavioral, behavioral, behavioral. Then you're going to start to actually use it to change the thinking patterns that are self-sabotaging. I, four years ago, wondered, as I started to see myself go from facing bankruptcy to building a eight-figure biggest. What But what happened for me is I started to say, Okay, this is a really cool little trick to bring out the most powerful side of you. But can I use this to actually cure myself of anxiety? The answer is, yes, you can. Four years ago, I went off Zoloft and I started using the five-second rule, which I'm going to explain in one second, to interrupt the patterns of worry and self-doubt, which, by the way, anxiety is nothing more than the habit of worrying spiraling out of control, and body feelings triggering now the habit of obsessive worrying that turns into anxiety and then escalates to panic.

I started using the five-second rule to interrupt my thoughts every time I would feel that worry kick in, and And because the prefrontal cortex is awakened when you use it, your mind is now ready to take on a totally different thought. It's a very different strategy than just trying to switch the channel on what you're thinking because you're actually inserting the step that nobody talks about, which is switching the gears in your mind so that your mind can actually take and believe the thinking.

Okay, so this is my brand of advice. It's got to be incredibly stupid on the surface. It's got to be so simple. It's really implausible that it works. And Once you start unpacking it, it has to have a crazy bananas amount of scientific proof and real-life proof in people's lives to prove why it works. So I'll tell you the story first behind the high five habit, because I did not set out and go like, Okay, I've written the five-second rule book. I need to come up with another five. I have been toiling away with what book to write for nearly five years. It's been five years since I've had a book in print. I had this random morning where there's a lot going on in my life. I'm not going to get into it because it's a boring story, but I was just having a really hard time in my life. I woke up, got out of bed, I made my bed like I always do. I walked into the bathroom. I'm standing there brushing my teeth, and I catch my reflection in the mirror. My first thought is, God, you look like hell. Seriously.

I know women in particular can relate to this, but what a lot of people don't realize is you guys are incredibly hard on yourselves, too. And so as I go, God, you look like hell, I start then cataloging all of the things that are wrong with my appearance. I'm like, your gray hair is coming in, you've got stripes on your neck, one of your boobs is lower than the other, you look exhausted. And then as soon as you have a negative thought or a self-criticism, it's like lint in a dryer. Once you start collecting it, it just keeps on collecting it. So now I'm thinking not about how horrible I look or how tired I look. Now I start thinking about all the stuff I need to do. I start going, Oh, my gosh, I got up a little too late, and I've got a Zoom call in. I don't even have a bra on yet. The dog needs to be walked. I could feel my energy going down. I just felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. Overwhelmed, uncertain. It doesn't even matter what was going on in my life at that time because I think it's a universal feeling to feel overwhelmed by your life at times.

Here I am, a motivational speaker.Unmotivated.Unmotivated, uncaffenated, no brawn, standing there in my underwear with my dog at my feet. I don't know what came over me. But as cheesy as it sounds, I just raised my hand and gave the tired, haggard woman in the mirror a high five. It didn't change my life right then and there, but something shifted. I felt a little lighter. I felt like I wasn't alone. I felt like, Okay, this moment in your life is hard, but you can do this, Mel. And I went on with my day. So the second day, I woke up, and this is when things started to really churn in my mind. The first thing that I noticed was this. So I wake up, Louis, and I make my bed. And I realized I was looking forward to that moment in the mirror where I was going to see myself. Now look, I'm I'm 82 years old. I will probably have a hot flash during the middle of this interview at some point. I'm a lot older than you.

Just don't eat lobster.

Oh, yeah. I had a really allergic reaction the last time we were together. Wow. But I have spent the first 45 years of my life either criticizing the woman in the mirror or ignoring her. This was the first time that I could remember that I was actually looking forward to seeing myself. When I was coming here today, you and I are very good friends. As I was walking in the building, I'm feeling excited to see you. It wasn't like I was feeling excited to see myself. I'm not like, Yeah, because I got a lot of crap going on in my life, but I felt a little bit like I'm about to see a friend. And so that second morning, I high-fived myself again. And again, I feel something shift. I feel just a little lightness in the mood, and I go on with my day. So the third morning, I do it again. And again, lightness. I keep doing it, keep doing it. A couple of weeks go by, and now I'm starting to feel a little bit of momentum, and I'm really enjoying it. I have no idea what the hell is going on.

I haven't even done this in front of my husband, Chris, yet because Let's be honest. Standing in front of a mirror. High-fiving yourself. Yeah, come on, how pathetic does it get? Like, it's really, is you like that? So I snap a photo of myself. I've got my retainer in. I got bedhead. I'm not looking I did not expect this to be the photo that would ignite a movement. And within an hour, I posted on my story on Instagram, within an hour, at least 100 people tag me. All over the world, people high-fiving the mirror with their kids, people on a submarine, high-fiving it in the military, people MMA. I thought, Okay, wait a minute. Maybe I'm not the only one that needs a little boost in the morning. Maybe I'm not the only one who feels alone. Maybe I'm not the only one that is missing a sense of encouragement and control and confidence in an overwhelming moment in my life. Maybe there's something here. Then the messages started to come in. Whoa, Mel. I have been using this for five days. This woman wrote to us, Lewis, She's had body dysmorphia for 20 years, has not been able to look at herself in the mirror.

Five days of doing this high five, and she said, I can look at I even see beyond the body, I see the person, and I can grin. We had a woman who wrote to us who said that she was in a domestic violence shelter. She had escaped a very abusive relationship. She had seen me talking at our friend Jamie Kermleema's event. She started doing the high five thing. She DMs us and she says that, I have childhood trauma. I've just been in a physically abusive relationship. I've lost everything. I'm in a domestic violence shelter. What this high five in the mirror is teaching me is that I still have myself. That was when I said, I got to figure out what's going on. I started to unpack the research, and the research around this simple ritual, I love that you called it a ritual because I want people to have it stack this with brushing their teeth. This is so life-changing. It's so simple. The science here is like, you can't believe it. Once I unpack it, you're going to be like, I can't believe cool this thing is. What's the science say? Okay, so the science.

Let's start with the first thing. The first thing is that when you first try it, you will not be able to raise your hand and high five yourself and be like, You suck, Mel, or, Today's going to be terrible. There's a reason for that. The reason is that for your entire life, you have given other people high fives. When you give a high five or you receive one, what is a high Just the gesture alone. What does this communicate if we do this to each other? Nice job, good work. You're doing amazing. Keep it up. Yeah. I believe in you. I love you. Let's go. If you blow a shot and you got to get back in the game, a high five is like, Shake it off. You can win. All of that lifetime of high-fiving other people and the messaging associated with it is programmed right here in your subconscious brain. There's a field of study called neurobics, which is about-Neurobics? I didn't make that up. It's interesting. Physical movement plus new neurological activity. When you marry an unexpected physical movement with new neurological activity, it's the fastest way to forge new neural pathways in your brain.

We know the example, you've covered this on your show, of brushing with the wrong hand and thinking positive thoughts. The reason why that works is because when you're brushing with the wrong hand, it's unexpected, your brain doesn't expect it. Instead of drifting off about the fact that you need to walk the dog, you have to focus so your prefrontal cortex is engaged. You're not used to high-fiving your own reflection. It's an unexpected physical movement that then activates all of the positive programming in your subconscious. So when you raise your hand and you high five, your tired self, Lewis, what happens is all of the messaging with this, the high five, I believe in you. I love you. I celebrate you. You got this. Keep going. Come on. It actually fuses with your freaking reflection. It's impossible to criticize yourself. Your brain won't allow it because it's not wired that way when you're making that motion.

Isn't that crazy? It's hard to say you You don't matter in anything.

No, you can't. You can't. And so this lifetime of positive subconscious programming associated with high-fiving other people gets fused with your own reflection in this ritual. That's just the beginning. That's That's just the beginning. The second thing that starts to happen that's really interesting. We've had a ton of people do this, obviously, around the world. Super easy idea. It's spreading around the world. We start interviewing people about what's going on, and this is what we notice. We notice that one of two things happen when you first try this. Here's how I want everybody to try it. You're going to go into the bathroom and do it before or after you brush your teeth. That's important because I want you to make this a ritual It's part of your morning routine. We need to stack it with something you already do. You're going to stand there for a minute and I want you to look at yourself. Now, that, right alone, most of us don't do. Look at yourself. I want you to just think about the day ahead. This is based on more research. Recent studies show from the University of Florida that if you take just a minute and you set an intention about how the day is going to go, about who you're going to be, how you're going to show up, what's the one thing that matters to you to really make a to make progress on.

If you just set that intention, who am I going to be today? How am I going to show up today? Even if it's a hard day, how are you going to show up? Then you raise your hand and you seal it. Research shows just setting the intention alone changes your mood. It increases your mood, it boosts your productivity. It increases your ability to make an impact on other people. When you seal it with this high five, it becomes this ritual of setting an intention for the day and also silencing the critic and reprogramming the default setting about how you see yourself, whether or not you believe in yourself. You leave that bathroom feeling like the wind is at your back. Now, when people do this for the first time, so you're going to stand there tomorrow and you're going to go, Okay, Mel Robinson, Lewis. Just sitting here, brush my teeth. Okay, this is stupid. You're going to just start rejecting it, I guarantee you, this is the coolest stuff you're going to have the biggest resistance to. For those of you that just raise your hand and do it, you're going to immediately be like, Why have I not been doing this?

It feels good to be encouraged and supported. To high-five yourself. Yes. Why have I not had my own back? Why do I stand here and criticize myself? Why do I allow this moment every single morning, to be a moment where life takes over and I drift into autopilot? Why am I not taking this moment for me to build a partner partnership with myself? The second group of people, and this is the larger group, resist it. This is really interesting. The reason why you resist it The reason why it feels weird is because you believe you're not worthy of support or celebration.

From yourself or from others? Period.

Why do we think we're not worthy celebration? Well, for people that grew up in a chaotic, violent, or whatever household, it was your lived experience. I think that for many of us, We look back on our lives, and the cognitive negative bias has us focus on the things that went wrong. So you begin to tell yourself a story about your life that is basically a pyramid of all the things that you regret, all the things that you wish had done over, of all the things that you don't like about yourself. You drag that with you into the bathroom every morning, and you stare at the mirror, and you see somebody that has screwed up. You see somebody who's not where you're meant to be. You see somebody who doesn't have the number on the scale or the car that you wanted or the job that you had hoped for or the relationship that you had always dreamed about. Standing there, you believe you're not worthy of support or celebration. It's this deep belief. We talk a lot in the personal development space of, Oh, I'm not good enough. I actually think that's the polite thing that people say.

I believe that people have a much more horrible way of talking to themselves. What? I can't say it on TV, but I can say it on the internet.

I'm a piece of shit.

I'm worthless. No one will ever love me. I screwed up my life. I'm a failure. I'll never amount to anything. It's too late. I'm a bad person. I think people actually say this to themselves. Yeah, and they say it over and over again. Yes.

Daily. Yes. Just like ruts on a dirt road, it starts to wear in your brain and it becomes the familiar path.

So you stand in front of the mirror and I'm telling you, raise your hand and let all that positive programming you've given to everybody else. We are amazing at celebrating everybody else. We cheer for our favorite sports teams. We buy tickets our favorite musicians. We throw birthday parties for people. We take on extra work for our colleagues. We help our family members out and our friends out. But when it comes to supporting ourselves, we don't know how to do it. In fact, there's a lot of people that think it's selfish to put yourself first or that you're arrogant if you're due. I'm here to tell you it is essential to your well-being, to your fulfillment, to to your happiness, all of it. If you're feeling resistance, you're either going to feel it because you already have a deep story that you don't deserve it because of your track record, your past, because of what's happening in your life, or you're going to feel resistance because you have been trained to believe that you only deserve that stuff when you're winning. If I don't have that car, I don't get the high five. If I didn't get that promotion, I didn't deserve it.

If I am not in a loving relationship, I don't deserve to be celebrated because I'm not actually achieving or doing the things that warrant that. I'm here to tell you, I'm on a mission to make every human being realize that if you wake up in the morning and you're breathing and you're standing in front of that mirror, and you have survived the stuff you have survived, and you are still waking up and trying to do better, you not only deserve a high five, you need it. Because what we also What we also know, based on the research is that empowerment, support, kindness, love, celebration, it is the single most motivating force on the planet. Tough love is a bunch of baloney. What really fuels people, particularly when you're going through a challenge, is feeling celebrated, seen, and supported, and the research bears it out. Yeah, I can think of the times when I was on sports teams where I had great loving and courage in coaches, it made me want to work harder from a more energized place, an abundant energy.

But when I had the coaches that would just degrade you and put you down and call your names in front of your teammates and make you feel bad, it would drive me to try to be better, but it was always harder. And I never felt satisfied. I never felt fulfilled. I always felt like even when I accomplish something, it still wasn't good enough. And then I repeat that pattern. Like, okay, I'm going to accomplish, but it's not enough to feel loved. And so let me keep accomplishing in order to feel loved, but I still don't love myself because it's not good enough. So let me go for the next thing. Yeah, exactly. It's funny because I have a photo on my phone that my therapist told me to do this exercise eight months ago, which was a strategy for me to reclaim the love for myself. So I have a photo of my childhood self. I don't know if people can see this on YouTube. Look how cute you are. But a photo of me. This is probably when I was five or six, maybe I was seven. But something that I've tried What I've been trying to do and really been integrating my life is to reconnect with the child where I felt like I stopped loving myself.

Okay, so let's talk about this right now. You ready?

Let me talk about this image. So let's talk about the Lewis this age, standing in front of a mirror. Yeah.

What I do is I stand in front of myself as a child. I imagine myself, but to do it, imagine looking at the mirror as yourself. Yes. Yeah. Well, what I'm trying to say is when you were this age and you stood in front of the mirror, You had a totally different relationship with yourself because you still loved yourself. You still thought that you were a great kid and you wanted all the things that the adult Louis wants.

You want to feel loved.

You want to feel seen. You want to feel heard. You want to feel like It doesn't matter. You, in seeing yourself when you were this age, felt those things for yourself. Yeah, absolutely. Somewhere along the way, you lost it. Correct. What I'm trying to say is that when you stand in front of this mirror, exactly what is talking about, when you've got coaches that scream at you and degrade you. Sure, it makes you run faster, but it leaves its mark. It does. It leaves its mark. There's research. Let me talk about why this is so motivating, particularly because so many of your audience love sports.

They did a study where they looked at NBA teams.

What they wanted to take a look at was, does fist bumps, backpack, some high fives make a difference in a team winning? Touch, right? Didn't they do a 2020 special or something? I don't know. But if they did, I need to watch it. But so the power of touch. But I think it's deeper. It's the power of encouragement. What they found is that in the study, at least in the years that they looked at, you could take a look at the teams that made it to the Championships in the NBA, go all the way back to the preseason, and those were the teams that had the most number of fist bumps and backpats and high fives. The same was true about the teams that were the lowest in the league at the end of the season. They had the least amount of fist bumps, high fives, and touch. Why?they're least encouraging.Correct. Those sorts of gestures build trust and partnership. I'm telling you, when you stand in front of a mirror and ignore yourself, you're like the losing NBA team. Interesting. Selfish on your own, isolated. You're not in partnership with the person you're staring at in the mirror.

You don't have your own back because you're ignoring yourself. Yes. There's another study, and this one is, I think, even more powerful. They did this study where they wanted to know what's the most motivating thing to help somebody get through a really big challenge. The researchers divide kids into three groups, right? They gave each of the groups of kids very challenging problems to work through. They wanted to measure, okay, how resilient, how long would they work, what were their attitudes like? Then they measured it based on, well, what form of praise or support are we going to give each one of these groups? Let's see what's the most empowering. First group gets what we know to be the fixed mindset stuff. The praise was all verbal praise, and it was simply about a trait. Louis, you are so smart. Louis, you are a super student, praising something that is just a compliment about you. The second group of students working on a challenging problem got praise based on work ethics, so something in their control. Oh, Louis, you're working so hard. Louis, you got such good perseverance. Louis, you're really just grinding away over there.

Good job. Those guys did better than Louis, you're smart. Louis, hard working, better. The third group, the researcher simply walked up, did not say a word, and high five the kid. Really? That's it. That's it. That group, literally, exponentially, more motivated, worked longer, worked through more challenging problems. Now, here's the big question. Why? Why would a simple high five with no verbal praise be more empowering and motivating and inspiring and develop more resilience and confidence and motivation inside somebody? The reason why is this. A high five affirms your deepest fundamental needs. It's not just a gesture. When you high five somebody, particularly somebody who has either blown the free throw shot or is working on something difficult or going through a really hard time, when you high five them, you're saying, I see you. When you high five them during a challenge, you actually are acknowledging, I know this is hard. So the person feels heard. And because it's one to one, and you have to be really intentional. If you and I go to high five, we have to focus on it. That was a good one. That was good. If you miss it, what do you do?

You got to do it again. Correct. So there's an intentionality behind it, and that makes you feel like you're being affirmed as a unique individual. Interesting. All of those things are in that one gesture. Now, it goes even more. There's even more here. I was talking to our buddy, Dr. Daniel Amen. One of the world's leading experts on brains.

He's got 60,000 brain scans.

I think it's 120,000.Oh, isn't it at this point?It's something crazy. He was so excited about the high five habit. He completely geeked out. He's like, Oh, my Gosh, yes, yes, yes. He's like, Yes, neurobics. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. So we then... He said, Let me tell you what else is going on, Mel. And I'm like, Really? There's more? He said, Yeah. He said, You know how when you do it, you said you felt like a little boost in your mood. He said, Well, there are two things going on there. He said, First of all, when you cross a finish line in a race, what do you do?Put your hands up.Yeah. What do you do in your favorite team sports? You high five someone. Yeah, you high five somebody. What do you do at a musical concert? You, Yay. What do you do? You're raising your hand in celebration when you high five somebody or fist bump them or put your arm around them. That raised arm gesture in a positive sense triggers your nervous system to tingle with celebration. It's the energy of celebration, even if you're going through something difficult. Even more, you get a dopamine drip when you do this.

Part of the reason why you feel this shift in your mood and you feel a little bit of like, Oh, okay, I can I can do this.

I got this. Is because of the dopamine, it's because of the nervous system, and it's because of all of this positive programming associated with that gesture. Isn't that crazy? That's powerful.

What does someone do, though, if they just constantly have the negative self-taught on their mind that they're no good? Do they go in front of the mirror every 10 minutes and do this? Or is there another strategy behind the negative self-taught? Well, okay. So first things first. Definitely make this high five in the mirror a habit, okay? So start practicing it. Give it 5 to 10 days and start to see what happens. The second thing that you can do with negative self-taught, okay, is you need to start to interrupt it. The thing about negative self-taught is that it is typically something you've engaged in since you were yay high. In addition to it being wired into your brain, it is also something that can get triggered. Triggered by your nervous system in stressful situations. The first step, and we can talk more about the filter in your brain and how the filter in your brain is causing you to stay stuck in a lot of this negative self-taught and how to use your mind to help you. But the first step is you got to do the awful part of getting self-aware of what the voice is saying.

The way that you do that, there's a couple of techniques that you can use to create what researchers or psychologists call objectivity. You want to separate yourself from the voice. You can do what Louis is doing.

He's writing down right now in a journal. You can keep just a little notebook with you, and you can catalog when your attitude tanks and what are you actually saying to yourself.

Should we write down all the things we're saying negative about ourselves? You can. I personally do it this way. I start to notice when I feel down, or I start to notice when my energy drops, and then I tune in to what I'm thinking about. If it's negative, I go, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I literally notice, Oh, you're sitting there thinking you're a bad person again. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that somebody's mad at you again. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that you screw everything up again. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that nothing ever works out for you. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that you've blown it. Interesting. Then I go, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and I go, I'm not thinking about that. That's the most basic technique to use because what I want you to do, since this is operating on autopilot, it's encoded right here. When you're not really thinking, this is what's running, like the soundtrack of your life. When you just start to notice that you have a thought that's not helping you, You can't control that it popped up, but guess what you can do? You can smack it down.

I use the five-second rule, which we've talked about a lot on your show. Count backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The counting backwards wakens your prefrontal cortex. It gives you a moment of control. Then the way to build distance, Lewis, is to say, I'm not thinking about that. Here's why. You're so used to thinking this way. I can't just say, Stop thinking you're fat and start thinking that you love your body. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. You've got to go, Oh, there I am. I'm trashing the way that I look. I'm telling myself that I'm overweight. I look like I'm hit. I'm hideous. No one is going to love me. You'd be like, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I am not thinking about that. It's an act of defiance. See, I want you to go from these negative thought patterns to a more positive, empowering high five attitude. Because if you continue to live in, I'm fat, I'm unworthy, no one's going to love me, I've screwed up my life, that will be your life. The trick on this is, I'm not saying, Change your thoughts and unicorns appear. I'm saying change your thoughts so you stop the 24/7 beat down and learn how to lift yourself up so that you can face the things that are going on in your life and so that you can take the actions that you need to take to change your life.

Because the reason why you're not changing is not because you're not capable. It's not because of the trauma or your past or anything else. It's because of the beat down. That's why you're not changing. It's draining. It's draining. It's demoralizing. And by the way, if you constantly are like, I'm unlovable, I'm worthy, I'm this, I'm that, why on earth would you feel motivated or do you think you deserve to change if that's the thing in your mind, it doesn't work. Pay attention. When you feel your energy go negative, be like, Oh, okay, what am I... Oh, whoa, that's disgusting. Five, four, three. I'm not thinking about that. You don't have to insert anything else. Let's just practice shutting it the hell up. The second thing you can do is once you get good at interrupting it, I want you to name... Let's turn it into a character. I did this with our son, Oakley, when he was struggling pretty profoundly with anxiety when he was in the fifth grade. He named his anxiety Oliver. Then we asked him to describe Oliver. Oliver was this pimply-face kid What is that? The Diary of the Wimpy Kid bully-looking kid.

Whenever the negative worries and stuff would come up, you could literally hear him go, Oliver, shut up. It is the ability, what's happening when you name it and picture the person, is that you're able to detach yourself from that voice in your mind that's talking. Because that voice is typically a caregiver that either talk to you that way talk to themselves that way, or some bully, or some trauma experience, or some nasty coach that beat this into your head. It's from somebody else. We want you to separate yourselves so you can be like, Oh, that's what Oliver sounds like. That's not actually how I want to talk to myself. Right. And so identifying it, interrupting it, and then you can get into the really incredible magic of rewiring your brain to work for you.

I think Ethan Cross, who's a psychologist out of the University, University of Michigan, has a book called Chatter, which is about all the different psychological strategies for eliminating the negative self-taught and improving the quality of your mind. And he says, Start coaching yourself just like you would have a great coach coaching you, have someone, like a character in your mind, coaching you, celebrating you with your self-taught to help you shift out of that by interrupted. Then, coach yourself. What would Louis say to me?

What would Mel say to me? Yeah, exactly. Here's the The tricky part of this. The tricky part of this is that I personally think most mantras are also complete garbage. The reason why I say that is because you don't freaking believe them. If you think you're worthless, you're never going to be able to stand in front of a mirror and change your life by going, I'm worthy because your brain's like, who? No, you're not. We've been talking about this for your life. You're not worthy. You don't want me to show you something? You have to interrupt it. If you're going to try to replace it, What you need to do are two things. Number one, you have got to come up with, I should have called it Pathetic Mantra because it would have been easier to remember. In the book, I called it a Meaningful Mantra. We should just call it a Pathetic Mantra. You need to come up with something that's like, okay, if you're really bad and you think you're a horrible person, don't make your mantra, I'm amazing. Make your mantra like, I'm doing the best I can. That's it. Something simple.

Yeah, you can believe that, right?

You can believe, I'm I'm not meaning to screw up.

I'm doing the best I can. That, I believe. That's better than, boy. I'm the best in the world right now. No, you're never going to believe that. Ever, ever, ever. For example, if you struggle with health and weight and stuff, it's probably going to be hard for you to stand in front of a mirror and be like, I love my body because you've been rejecting it. So instead, look at yourself in the mirror and use a meaningful mantra. I deserve to feel healthy. And I'm going to treat myself in a way that proves it. That's it. That's different. It's different because it's believable. The only other thing that will change the way that you think is behavioral activation therapy. There's a lot of the tools in this book that are grounded as a baseline in the body of research around behavioral activation therapy, which I know you talk about all the time on this show, which is basically, act like the person you want to become. It's If you want to be more like Louis, act like Louis. Follow his morning routine. Take his advice. Interrupt the garbage, Oliver, in your head. Five or three, I'm not talking to you, Oliver.

What would Louis say to me? How would Louis talk to Louis? Start to act like the person you want to become and something interesting happens. This is why the high five works, by the way, because it is an action.

You are acting like somebody who believes in and loves themselves.

That's why it works. Moving to motion. Don't just think only, but move and act. When you see yourself, we always talk about positive morning routines. Let's talk about negative ones, okay? Because your negative patterns are the reason why you have horrible self-taught. When I was in law school, I hated my life. My anxiety was out of control. I was out of control. I hated law school. My behavior actually reflected my state of mind. I would wake up, hungover. I would immediately think, Oh, my God, I'm late. I would then reach for a cigarette and light it. Then I would run around the apartment getting dressed and trying to find everything because nothing was organized. I would then quickly drive to Dunkin' Donuts, even though I had no time to stop for coffee. I'd get a big old coffee with four sugars and two creams, smoking another cigarette on the way, speeding my whole way there. Then I would sit in class, be panic-stricken about being called on. Same thing again. Then I would sit at lunch, pick it a salad, gossip with friends, avoid the homework. Then I would go to the library, procrastinate forever.

Then I would drive home, split a bottle of wine with my roommate, fall asleep, wake up, repeat. When you see somebody's actions, you can typically predict just how bad they're trapped in their mind. Absolutely. But I think we all are. I think even people that have healthy habits don't have a healthy relationship with themselves. That your self-talk is ground zero because how you talk to yourself, what you think about yourself when you look in the mirror, that default setting in your mind, jeez Louise. I mean, it makes me really sad, honestly. I gave my first speech in two years because of the pandemic, yesterday in Salt Lake. And there was a book line. And even though everybody had masks and they were 6 feet away, you could see the pain in people's eyes, the isolation, the sadness, the overwhelm, the feeling of uncertainty. I think that people are feeling way more uncertain and afraid than they're actually saying right now. That the sustained amount of change that we've been having to manage, it's too much. It's a lot. If you stand in front of the mirror and you If you can't see somebody that's worth supporting through this, you're just going to continue to go down because the one person that you spend your whole life with is you.

This is the relationship you need to be working on. You want to be loved? You better learn how to love yourself. You want to feel worthy? Stop looking for it out there and treat yourself like you're worthy. How do you do that? Well, by pushing through the resistance and raising your… If you can't freaking high five your reflection, you can't do that. How the hell are you going to make things happen in your life? If you don't think you are worthy of support and celebration, particularly when life is hard? Yeah, how are you going to believe that other people are going to do that for you as well? If you can't do it for yourself, why would other people do that? Well, actually, this is why people's relationships don't work out.

Because you're looking outside your sofa the things you actually need.For validation.Correct. You are chasing people and seeking validation in romantic relationships.

That will end when you can stand in front of that mirror and validate yourself. When you build yourself up, when you support yourself, you show up totally differently for everybody else. When you know that you can have your own back, you're not going to be looking for the validation from your boss or your friends or all these other things. People have problems with boundaries because they can't look themselves in the eye. So how the hell are they going to look somebody else in the eye and say, Actually, this doesn't work for me? Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.