Today, you and I are going to walk through some of the steps of the Hero's Journey, and how you can use this story archetype as a framework to learn more about yourself than ever before. Because the hero is within you, whether you believe it or not. Your life is trying to pull the hero out of you. And the only way you find out more about yourself is if you go on this bigger journey, not necessarily to save the world like the Avengers do, but perhaps to save yourself. And in doing so, you'll ultimately save the world around you. So what exactly is the Hero's Journey framework? Well, it was created by Professor Joseph Campbell, and he was a brilliant mythologist who spent his life studying the stories of religions and myths of culture around the world. And he had this huge epiphany that there is a common pattern in all of these stories that we love, that there is a narrative that goes way beyond time and culture and the geography of where the story is coming from, that in every single story about a hero, there's the exact same patterns of steps, things that are universal about the human experience.

And that's what he called the Hero's Journey. It's a narrative structure that follows the hero as they embark on an adventure, face challenges and trials, undergo show personal growth and transformation, and ultimately return home to their community with newfound wisdom or a valuable new treasure. And it's what you see in every single movie that you love. In fact, when Star Wars came out in 1977, it was unlike anything any of us had ever seen before. The story of Luke Skywalker blew the world away. And here's a A very interesting fact that you may not know. Can you guess who George Lucas considered his inspiration and his mentor? That's right. Professor Joseph Campbell. See, the hero's journey isn't just a pattern that happens to pop up in all your favorite movies. The hero's journey is the reason why the movies and stories and myths that you love become popular in the first place. You and I absolutely love The Hero's Journey because it always begins with striking out from the safety of your home and searching for your true calling and your larger power. And today, you will realize that this is the story of your life, too, because you and I are going to break down the framework of the Hero's journey to help you understand exactly where you are right now as you are living it.

And by the end of our conversation today, my mission is not only to get you to I really embrace the simple truth that, yes, just like Luke Skywalker and Milan and Frodo, you are the hero of your own life, and there is a bigger calling for you. But I also am on a mission to make you think about what that calling might be for you. Because the hero's journey isn't just about storytelling or mythology. It's a metaphor for the human experience, for your experience. It mirrors What's the journey of discovery and growth that you undertake in your life, whether you realize it or not. It's a guide to understanding change and transformation, and it gives you the insights that you need to overcome any challenge that comes your way. It is the path to reaching your true potential. And we're going to talk about the stages of the hero's journey and how you apply them to your life, both to provide deeper meaning to your past, but also, and this is where it gets real fun, to provide a roadmap for your future. So let's start at the beginning. In Joseph Campbell's research and scholarship, there are 17 levels to the Hero's journey.

But today, you and I are going to focus on the four most important ones: the ordinary world, the call to adventure, crossing the threshold, and the midpoint. And so let's start with the very very first phase of the hero's journey, and that's called the ordinary world. Let's think about some of our heroes and our favorite movies and stories, because when you first meet the hero of a story, where are they? They're living a normal, boring, irritating life, right? I mean, you may not remember this from Star Wars, but when you first met Luke Skywalker, do you remember where he was living? He was living on the desert planet, Tatooine, and he has no idea who he really is or what the potential of his life is. He's just living a boring life on some desert planet. He's completely unaware of the enormous world that is out there and his role in it. Same thing with Milan. She's living in China, and her sole duty, remember this? Was to bring honor to her family by getting married. She has no idea who she really is or what the potential of her life is or what lies beyond the little town that she lives in.

Or what about Lord of the Rings? Same thing, right? Frodo. Where does he live? At the beginning of the movie? Oh, my gosh, he's there with his big feet in the beautiful Shire. He has no desire to leave it. He's completely unaware of the world that's out there. He's never left the Shire? Are you kidding? He doesn't know he's the person that's going to save the world. Neither do you. So how does the ordinary world, this first step of the hero's journey, apply to you? Simple. You You have no idea who you really are and what the potential for your life is. I mean, how could you? You only know what you know based on the life that you're living right now. Same with me. The life you're living in this tiny little part of the big, wide world. And that's okay. That's okay. I hope our conversation today makes you open your eyes a little wider, makes you look around and consider there's an entire world that you have yet to discover, and there is power power and bravery inside of you that you have yet to tap into. And let's think about the next part that happens in every movie.

This is the call to adventure. It's the moment when ordinary life is suddenly disrupted by the call to something greater. Now, in the Lord of the Rings, you remember when this happened, right? Frodo. He's sitting there in the Shire. He has no intention to leave. Who shows He goes up, Gandalf. And next thing you know, he's hearing all about the One Ring and Modor and all the world that is about to be destroyed. Holy cow, talk about a call to adventure. Or Milan. Milan is told she's not worthy of a husband. Remember that? And so she wants to find a way to make her parents proud. And she thinks, Oh, wow. I know how I'm going to make my parents proud. That could be going to war in my dad's place. In Star Wars, Luke discovers a message that's hidden in the droid. Remember that little projected message? Which leads him on the path to becoming a Jedi. Now, let's talk about you and step two of the hero's journey. Germany, the call to adventure. Now, Luke and Frodo, they were both lucky enough to have someone actually give them these calls. But your life probably isn't going to work that way.

That said, the call to Adventure is all around you right now. And there are four things you must know in order to recognize it. And before we get to those four things that help you recognize the call to adventure that's right there right now, I want to take a quick pause to call upon our amazing sponsors who bring this podcast to you at zero cost. And while you listen to our sponsors, share this episode with someone who you think is ready for their hero's journey. All right? Good. And don't go anywhere, because I'll be waiting for you when we come back. Hey, it's your buddy Mel, and I made this video because I personally believe you are capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for it. We're here at the Mel Robbins Podcast Studios. This was just part of my imagination three years ago, and now we're dominating the podcast landscape around the planet. How do you do that? Well, the same way you do anything in your life. And I want to teach you how to launch yourself, your life, your business, anything in your life forward. I have a six month long coaching program that is so extraordinary.

It's called Launch. It's open for registration right now. The next time I'm doing this in 2025, I don't want you to miss out on getting the support, the accountability, the structure, and all the secrets and science that I use inside a coaching experience to help you make extraordinary things happen. It's going to blow your mind what your life looks like in October if you jump in now. So go to melrobins. Com/launch before registration closes. Let's Welcome back. It's your friend Mel, and we're talking about Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey, and we're focusing on four specific steps of it. And you just learned the first one, which is the ordinary world. And now we're about to jump into the second one, the call to adventure. The call to adventure is all around you, and there are four things you must know in order to recognize it in your own life. So here's the first thing. Number one, the call to adventure will not likely come from someone else. I mean, a robot isn't going to come and project a message to you. A wizard is not going to show up at your front door and be like, Come on now, we got to go save the world.

This isn't someone coming to you with your future on a silver platter saying, You're the chosen one. That's not how it works in the real world. It works that way in the movies, and we love it. But this call to adventure is something you you have to be open to and be willing to see for yourself. And here's one way you can start to open your mind up to this. Ask yourself this question, What is your life trying to tell you? I'm going to ask you that question again. What is your life trying to tell you? If you really sit with that question, you'll notice that your life is trying to nudge you in a certain direction. There's something you can't stop thinking about. There's some sign that keeps showing up. There's something that you've wanted to do, but you haven't done it. And I need you to realize that you've got to be willing to start to look for this call to adventure, because if you don't pay attention, you're going to miss it. Now, the second thing you need to know about the call to adventure in your life is it can come as a very positive signal, or it could be a negative one.

And here's an example that you might be able to relate to of a negative thing that represents a call to adventure. So one of my best friends, Jody, she and I have been literally friends since the fourth grade. Well, she has lived in Santa Barbara for years, and all of a sudden, her rent started going up. She recently left a job she didn't like, and And she has just felt like something's been off about where she lives. And then both of her parents ended up in the hospital at the same time. Talk about a wake-up call. She had this instinct, this pull, I should really move back home to Michigan. I don't know how much longer my parents are going to be around. I'm so far away. I really feel like I should move back home to Michigan. That right there is her call to adventure. Rent going up, leaving a job you don't like, all of a sudden, something changing with her family. That's an example of what I'm talking about. And how much more positive do you feel if you look at that situation and you frame it as a call to adventure?

Very different than feeling like life is breaking apart. Let me give you now a positive example of what could be a call to adventure. And this is like a small thing. My husband Chris and our daughter Sawyer, when it's snowing outside and it's the winter months, they go to this mountain nearby, and they do what's called skinning up the mountain, which is you take these skis and you put these sticky things on the bottom of them, and you basically hike up a mountain, a snow mountain, with your skis on it. And then when you get to the top, you take the sticky things off, and now you can ski down. And Chris has organized this whole group of people that meet in the parking lot, and they now do it twice a week during the winter. I feel pulled to do it. But I'm scared of it. I'm not in great shape. I'm not as good as they are at this, especially thinking about pulling into a parking lot where Chris has organized this group, and there's 30 or 40 people there that do this all the time. But here's the thing. As I think about this, I feel the pull.

I could see myself as somebody that gets up super early to do that, as somebody that has that level of adventure, of somebody that's doing something that's that cool. And I'm using the word pulled because that's an example of a call to adventure. For you, you might feel pushed, or you might feel pulled. Could be positive, could be negative. Both are a call to adventure. The third thing I want you to be aware of is that it can be big or it can be small. I am so moved by the number of you who listen to this podcast around the world and write to me and say that simply taking on something new or bringing back something that I used to do, that it's made you so happy. It's made a part of you come alive. It's made you tap into something deeper, like taking a painting class or writing every day in your journal again, or just the instinct that you have that you want to make your life a little bit better. These are all examples of small things that are calls to adventure for you. Number four, and this is super important, it is so easy to refuse it.

So easy to refuse it. And I think this is why we identify with characters in our favorite movies who are the reluctant hero. You are the reluctant hero in your own life, just like Luke. Do you remember what happens at the beginning of the movie? He's bending over this robot as he's trying to fix it, and all of a sudden this message pops out, You are my only hope. You are my only hope. And you remember his response? His response was not like, Where's the first flight out of here? His response was, I don't think that I can do this. I hate the Empire, but there's nothing I can do about this right now. I got stuff I need to do on my desert planet. I don't think this is meant for me. Isn't that what you say, too? That there's nothing I can do about this right now. See, whenever you find yourself in a place where you feel stuck, or you feel like you have to stay where you are for the betterment of the people around you, even though you don't want to, that's a sign of this tension between the call to adventure and staying where you are.

Luke always felt so different from who he actually is. He always had this inner turmoil between who he is on the desert planet and who he knows he's being asked to be. And I think that's so relatable because it is the human experience, right? That you don't know what you're meant for, so you stay stuck in this tension, and you never leave the comfort of your ordinary world because you don't know where to set out to. And so I'm going to keep coming back to this question that I asked you just a few minutes ago. What is your life trying to tell you right now? This may be exactly where you are in your life right now, the reluctant hero, resisting the call, refusing to acknowledge that there is something more, maybe because you're afraid or you're not sure what more is. Well, that tension, that right there is evidence that the call to adventure exists right now in your life. Because whenever you say, I'm stuck, that's a way for your soul to say, Can you answer the call to adventure? Get me out of this neighborhood. Get me off this planet. Get me out of this little village.

We got something to do. There is a hero inside you, and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding rattle the cage and say, Wake up, we got stuff to do. Here's how you are going to use Joseph Campbell's framework, The Hero's Journey. Start labeling these moments of tension as a call to adventure. That breakup, that heartbreak you feel, guess what that is? Call to adventure. That layoff you didn't see coming? Call to adventure. The jealousy that you feel as you watch your friends move forward with their lives, whether they're moving across country, or they're going to graduate school, or they're moving in with a significant other, or moving out for that matter? Call to adventure. And if you're like me, I am looking ahead at my life, and Chris and I are to be empty nesters this fall. Now, I can sit around and worry about what I am going to feel like as an empty nester when Oakley heads off to college, or I can see this as an amazing call to adventure. A whole new journey is about to begin, a journey where I will only discover what's possible by going through it. I mean, how cool is that?

To think of changes in your life as an opportunity, to see changes in your life as a moment and the ability to find yourself, to become the hero that you need, to discover some power inside you that you didn't know existed. And by the way, you can only find by going through this journey. And you know what's interesting about the hero's journey? Is that if you look backwards at your life, especially in moments of challenge, you can see many heroes journeys. You can see how going through something brought out the hero inside you. It offered up this opportunity for growth and discover some treasure that you didn't realize was there. What's so cool about using this as a framework, because my therapist does this all the time, I'm constantly writing down the notes that she tells me as we're having these conversations, is that you can use this framework moving forward. You can stand where you are right now and say, Okay, my life is great, but I'm in an ordinary world, right? There's a call to adventure. And when you open your eyes and you see tension or feeling stuck, or you feel the pull or the push, and you frame it as a call to adventure, now you're ready for stage three in the hero's journey, and that is crossing the threshold.

Now, this is the moment where the hero leaves behind the safety of the ordinary world and ventures into the unknown, fully committing to their journey of transformation. Now, in Star Wars, Luke leaves his planet, and he goes on this new quest, Mulan. She leaves her home. Remember, in the middle of the night, she even disguised herself as a man to sneak into the army's training camp to take the place of her father in the war? Lord of the Rings, crossing the threshold. Frodo leaves the safety of the Shire. I even remember that moment where they stop and turn to one another and say, We've never been this far. And then they set out on their journey and cross the threshold. Now, my friend that I mentioned, Jody, she crossed the threshold. She packed up her house in Santa Barbara. She loaded up her car. She got her Bulldog into the passenger seat next to her, drove across country, and moved home to Michigan. She's going to live with her parents, and she texted me last night, I just arrived for my next adventure. She moved back home, and she's turning the upstairs of her parents house into an apartment.

Why? Because she felt pulled to to take care of them. Now, they never asked her to do that. I'm sure now that she's crossed the threshold, she's probably going, Oh, my God, what the hell have I done? Here's the thing. It's not just the physical act of leaving a place. If you say to yourself out loud, I want something different, that can be its own commitment. That can be its own threshold that you cross. You could submit an application. You could step into the gym for the first time. You could throw out all the alcohol in your house. You could make the doctor's appointment. In fact, just sitting down in a calm and mature way and expressing a boundary about something that needs to change, that's a way that you cross a threshold in a relationship. Yeah, It is hard, as I mentioned, to see the call to adventure, but you want to know what's actually more difficult than recognizing that you're called to do something more? It's actually committing to it. Crossing this threshold is the most powerful step, in my opinion, because it's a huge turning point in the hero's journey. And once you do it, there's no turning back.

It's a declaration of intent. It is a bold and courageous act. And this is why you hear me talk about taking the first step, or getting started, or signing up, or saying what you need to say out loud all the time. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Take the action. Because it's bigger than just that first step. If you look at the courage that it takes for you to answer the call to change, to be greater, to do something that scares you, this stage of crossing the threshold is no joke, because you can live for years with that tension, knowing that you're meant for something greater and never do anything about it. And this is the part of the hero's journey where most people fail, because there is no journey until you take this step and you answer the call and you cross the threshold. It's when you commit to yourself and to the journey that you're officially on the journey, not by thinking about it. I mean, think there would be no Star Wars if Luke just stayed on the planet and thought about it. There'd be no Lord of the Rings if Frodo was still just laying around and eating good food in the Shire.

There'd be no Milan if she was like, Okay, I guess I'm not marriage material. I guess I'll just die single in my parents house. No, at some point, you have to not only answer the call, but you have to begin it. That's what it means to be on the journey. And speaking of a journey, I want to make a hero's call out to our amazing sponsors who bring you the Mel Robbins podcast at zero cost. So take a quick listen. And when we come back, do not go anywhere because we're just starting this journey now. And the next and most pivotal stage is one that you cannot afford to miss. Stay with me. And you want to know one of my favorite sponsors? It's me. That's right. I'm coming in right now with my own ad. And if you're loving the Hero's journey, you're probably I'm thinking, But Mel, I want allies. I mean, Frodo had Gandoff and Sam. Luke had Han Solo and Princess Leia. And Mulan? She had Mushu and Cricky. I mean, come on now. What about me? If you're nodding your head, first of all, Consider the Mel Robbins podcast, your ally.

But second, once a year, I gather amazing people from around the world together, and we spend six months going through our own hero's journey. You can think about it as a way to do a six-month quest with people around the world and discover the power within you and go create something amazing. If you want to learn more about this program and how to participate in this quest in 2024, just go to melrobbins. Com/launch. If it's not available, you can just hop on the waitlist for when I open up the Quest in 2025. Melrobinds. Com/launch. It's time to become the hero of your own life. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel, and you and I are talking about Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey. And we just talked about the powerful step of crossing the threshold. And now, you have come to the midpoint. Now, This is where you've left the ordinary world. You have answered the call. You've crossed the threshold. This is where the work begins. This, by the way, is also where the magic happens. It's also where you to find your mentors and your allies, because once you set off on this journey, if you ever notice that all kinds of people start to show up to help, it's pretty cool, right?

But here's the thing about the midpoint. It's also where there are so many challenges along the way. And it's also not the end of the journey yet. See, this point signifies the second half of the movie, right? And you're probably going to spend the second half of your life on this part of the journey, too. I I mean, this happens in all the stories that we love, right? In Star Wars, along the journey, Luke faces challenge after challenge after challenge after challenge, and one ally after another shows up. And same thing happens to Milan, including a huge battle that she thinks is the final stand. But it isn't. And in the Lord of the Rings, holy smokes. I mean, just think of how it twists and it turns. And Frodo and his companions also are facing challenge after challenge and decreasing dangers. And just when you think it's about to all end, boom, something unbelievable happens. And in the movie world, this second act is so long. It just keeps going. I mean, how many battles are there? How many challenges? How many times are they going to fall down? Well, it's testing your strength and your resilience.

And you also get glimpses of success, little wins that keep you going. And Here's the thing about the midpoint. Don't you dare turn back. Do not do it. And in your life, the midpoint in your journey could show up in so many different ways. It could be a series of challenges or setback. It's the moment that you may question yourself. I think of my friend Jody, who just moved back, and I imagine her pulling into the driveway, moving in with her parents who were both recently hospitalized. Can you imagine how she's going to face the challenges? I mean, you can imagine how she's going to question, Is this the right decision? What the heck am I doing here in the middle of Michigan? What is going on? This is not what I thought was going to happen, and she's going to have this long time where it feels like she's not making progress, or she's not going to break through, and she's not going to understand where is this all leading. But it's always leading somewhere, isn't And that's the hero's journey. And the same is true for you, to trust that it's leading you somewhere, to trust that when you answer the call, you will be rewarded at some point.

That's the midpoint. If you're sitting there holding yourself back and you're telling yourself, It's too late, or My life is so busy, I couldn't possibly fit in this thing that I want to do. You're wrong. You're absolutely wrong. You can go to grad school. You can move across country. You can start that business. You do have the time, and you can fit it in. I want to share a personal story with you. My husband Chris, for example, he was in this stage for a long time. When we first got married, he decided that he wanted to get his MBA He answered the call. He crossed the threshold. And then the midpoint? Holy smokes. Do you know he earned his MBA from Babson by taking one class at It took the man seven years to complete his degree. Do you know how many times he thought about quitting? He would come home from class at night after working all day and be like, I am literally twice as old as everybody in the class. In fact, it took so long that all three of our children were born while he was in the MBA program. He thought about giving up all the time.

This stage, the midpoint, this is a slog. And you want to know what? We all face it. It's part of the hero's journey. I'm in the middle of a slog right now. I am writing a book. I am so excited about the book. I answered the call. I crossed the threshold. I've been putting pen to paper. I'm also not done with the manuscript. And I am spending every single weekend, all weekend, and every single evening, just slogging away. And in fact, this past week, I sat in a chair for three days straight. I could not write a single word. I felt like I was at that point in the Lord of the Rings, where Frodo is at that weird, disgusting pond at the base of Modor, or Modor, or however the hell you say that scary mountain that he's going toward. Just, it's not working. Why am I here? This is the part of the writing and releasing of a book. It's not sexy. I don't feel like a hero. I feel like quitting. This is the midpoint, and I'm experiencing everything that heroes experience in the movies that we love for literally 50% of the movie.

The ups, the downs, the questioning of your ability, the unexpected challenges. Here's what the midpoint does. It requires something of you. It requires you to keep showing up, to keep digging deeper and deeper and deeper within yourself, to keep surprising yourself, and to keep going. It would be so easy to quit. But don't you dare? The movie would be over. The journey would be done. I mean, it is called the Hero's Journey, not the Hero's Finish Line. So you're not finished. In fact, you're never finished. I mean, that's the point of your life, right? And that's my big message to you right now. You are not finished. You have so much more strength and resilience and ability that you haven't even tapped into yet. And you won't unless you keep going. Because as you keep facing these challenges in your life, in this midpoint, yeah, you'll have lots of little wins, but it's through facing the challenges that you discover what you're meant to discover about yourself, whether it's Luke defeating Taking the Empire or Frodo destroying the Ring and saving the World, or you finishing the manuscript, or getting your masters, or settling into that new stage of life and creating it to be extraordinary, you'll figure it out.

Every single movie that you love ends with the hero of the movie, figuring it out. So let me stop and ask you, what did they actually figure out? What did Luke figure out? What did Frodo figure out? What did Milan figure out? If you look back at your own life and you think about the most challenging things that you have ever faced and lived through, what did you figure out? You figured out who you are and what you're capable of. You may not think you're changing the world when you go back to school or When you pack up your stuff and leave your job and move across country and back in with your parents, you may not think you're changing the world when you answer the call for adventure that's calling to you. But what you are doing is changing yourself. See, the hero at the end of the story always comes home, home to themselves. And what's interesting When you go back home to where you began, if you've ever experienced this, of going back to your childhood home. What's so fascinating, if you've ever gone back to your childhood home, isn't it interesting how small it feels?

The reason why it feels so small is because you realize when you go back, that you've outgrown it. That when you left, you changed. You grew. You learned something about yourself. That life tested you. That you discovered something by facing this challenge, by answering the call, and you surprised yourself with your ability to face new things in a new place that you never thought you'd be capable of doing. So whenever you come back to where you came from, you will be confronted with the fact that it stayed the same, but you haven't. And maybe what you're recognizing as you listen to this is that there have been many, many heroes journeys that you've already learned from in your life. When you left home for college, when you discovered your strength after a relationship ended, when you overcame a health challenge or handled an unexpected setback or layoff, you pushed through grief and learned how to live with it, you moved to a new place and found a new community, or maybe you look back and you see that you're a totally different person today because of the habits and the changes that you committed to and started over a year ago.

And look, you and I might not be fighting the empire or truly saving the world. But every single day when you wake up, you're facing your own battles. You're in the trenches. You're doing the work. You're in the midpoint of some journey that you're on, and you are stronger and braver and more resilient than you know. That's what makes you the hero in your own life. So if you're sitting there feeling like Yeah, things are a little ordinary. I am a little bored. Or maybe you're realizing that tension isn't tension at all. It's telling you something bigger, and you need to stop ignoring it. You need to see it for what it is. It's a call to adventure, and it's time for you to answer the call and begin the journey. I can promise you this, you're already He got me as your ally. I may not be as good-looking as Gandoff, but I'm going to be there right by your side on your hero's journey. And in case no one else tells you, let me be the one to tell you, I love you, and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life.

And when you commit to doing that, you not only discover the hero inside yourself, but you create a better world. So if I'm hearing you correctly, what you're saying is that one of the biggest things that somebody could take away from this conversation with you is that you are not hardwired to feel happy simply because you've achieved something, that happiness is tied to pursuing it, not the achieving of it?

Yes. If you do live by the belief that achievement will lead to happiness, that will cause you a great deal of unhappiness.

Oh, that's a big one.

In fact, that is one of the main causes for the levels of unhappiness that we see in our world because people are focusing on the wrong thing. They're climbing up the wrong mountain.

Can you break that down for us? Because I want to just stay on this point and highlight it because if thinking about happiness wrong creates unhappiness, Can you explain to us how you want us to think about happiness?

So happiness is important. It matters. Just like we are hardwired not to celebrate successes forever, we're also hardwired to pursue happiness. So it's not that I'm saying, Okay, forget about happiness. Happiness matters. However, there's also research, and this is research done quite recently by a professor Professor Moss, M-A-U-S, showing that if I wake up in the morning and say to myself, I want to be happy, or happiness is important for me, or it's a value for me, I will actually become less happy.

What? Wait a minute. Really?

That was exactly my reaction. That's a problem. I read about this five years ago, and I said, But that's what I'm dedicating my life to. Of course, happiness is important for me. And yet what the research clearly shows is that this will make you less happy. So does this mean we should kid ourselves, say to ourselves, I don't want to be happy, wink, wink, I actually do. Self-deception is certainly not the path to happiness. So what do we do about it? Well, let me use an analogy that was very helpful for me in thinking about happiness. Imagine you go outside. It's a beautiful sunny day, and you want to enjoy the sun. So you look up at the sun directly. What happens? You hurt yourself. It burns. It hurts. You tear up. So looking at the sun directly hurts. However, what if you take a prism and you break the sunlight, and then you look at what has just been broken. In other words, the colors of the rainbow. Then you can look at the sunlight and enjoy it, but you're looking at it indirectly. It's the same with happiness. Pursuing it directly and saying, I want to be happy.

Happiness This is important for me. That will make us unhappy. But if I break down happiness into its metaphorical colors of the rainbow and then pursue it indirectly, that is when I can actually become happier.

Okay, so I'm going to see if I can understand this because you're saying, I totally get the part that if you focus on something maniacally, right? You're going to get the sun spots. You cannot hold that intent gaze at something, even if you want to. But When the sunlight hits a prism and it cast a rainbow, you're saying that the rainbow is the way that you indirectly enjoy the sun. I have so many questions. The first one I have is, what is the definition of happiness?

There are five elements to happiness. There may be more, but five main elements to happiness, which we call the spire element.

The spire.

S-p-i-r-e. S stands for spiritual well-being. Spiritual well-being is about, of course, we can attain it through religion, but we can also find it through doing something that is meaningful to us, purposeful. By being mindful, by being present, we experience the spiritual. That's one of the colors of the rainbow. If I wake up in the morning and say, I want to be happy, I'll be less happy. But if I wake up in the morning and say, I want to find something which is more meaningful to do, or I'm going to meditate for 10 minutes now, that is an indirect way of pursuing happiness. That's one of the colors. That's the S of spire, the P of spire. That's physical well-being. Physical well-being is about nutrition. It's about rest and recovery, sleep. It's about touch. It's about what we eat. That, of course, matters. If I start to exercise regularly, that's an indirect way of pursuing happiness. If I eat more healthfully, the same. Then we have the I of spire. I stands for intellectual well-being. That's about curiosity, about asking questions, about constantly learning, about deep diving, whether it's into a text or a work of art or nature.

And these are, again, all indirect ways of pursuing happiness. The fourth color of the rainbow, the R E, inspire relational well-being. Number one predictor of happiness, quality time we spend with people we care about and who care about us. So if I spend more time with my loved ones, indirectly pursuing happiness. And finally, the E, inspire emotional well-being. Emotional well-being is, first of all, about giving ourselves the permission to be human. In other words, embracing painful emotions that are natural part of any life, even a happy life, sadness, anger, frustration, allowing these emotions to freely flow through us, paradoxically, actually leads to more happiness. So these five elements of happiness, spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional well-being are the metaphorical colors of the rainbow. And when we pursue them, we're actually pursuing happiness indirectly and becoming happier.

As you were describing all five elements, you did keep the word well-being. And what I wonder as I'm listening, because it makes a lot of sense, right? That all of these components go into a whole look at how to elevate or experience happiness in your life. What do I got to achieve next to feel that thing that I want to feel? How would you begin to explain to somebody like that what this actually means and how you pursue it. If you don't even know what happiness feels like, you got the wrong definition.

The first thing that I would do is I would take a step back and explore models of happiness. Because if you think about it, in our culture today, we have two major models of happiness. The one model of happiness, which is mostly associated with the West, is you become happier by achieving your goals. That's the most You get to the peak of the mountain, then you'll be happy. That's a model that I tried and that many people tried. It doesn't really work. The other model that people veer towards is, Okay, so the future doesn't get us happiness. Let's focus on the now. Let's just be in the present moment. That's an alternative model, which is mostly, again, this is very broad brush strokes, mostly associated with the east. Meditation, mindfulness, being the hero Here and now. There are problems with both models. We know what the problem is with the future-oriented model, but there's also a problem with the present-oriented model, and that is human nature again. Because we do want goals. We are We're ambitious. We do want to achieve things, and whether you're living here or in Vietnam. The question is, can these two models be reconciled?

In other words, can you draw the of both worlds? The answer is yes. Goals matter. They're important, whether it is to win a championship in sports, or whether it is to get into a college, or whether it is to make X amount of money. Goals matter.

We care about them. Why do they matter in the context of happiness?

Well, they matter because, again, it's part of our nature. We want to improve. We want to get better, and that's a beautiful and wonderful part of our nature, which we ought to celebrate, not attack. That's a good thing. However, what we also know is that the achievement of these goals will not make us happy. What will make us happy? Not the achievement of these goals, but the existence of these goals. Whether or not I achieve them is actually less important. To have them matters. Why does it matter? Because think about it, you go on a road trip and you've no idea where you're going. So you turn left or right, you look over, Am I falling over a What should I do today? Is this the right thing? You're meandering, you're not certain, you're not happy then. But if you know, I'm going to the top of that mountain over there, then you can go there with full energy, with motivation, especially if that mountaintop is meaningful to you, which is an important component of a goal, of course. You have a meaningful goal, you're going towards it. What does having letting that goal do?

What it does for you is it liberates you to enjoy the here and now.

That makes a lot of sense.

That's how the two of them are reconciled.

Because it gives your day-to-day life a sense of purpose and direction. I can see how if you wake up in the morning and you're either just going through the motions or you wake up in the morning and you're not quite sure what to do with your time because you're not quite sure what you want, how that lack of purpose then starts to probably make you think too much and probably make you start to dwell on questions like, Am I happy? Am I not happy? What should I be doing? I don't know. Am I lost? Am I stuck? I mean, I've certainly been in those areas of my life, and so you're absolutely right about that. I see what you're saying.

Then what that means is that that future goal is not an end, but rather a means. It's a means towards liberating you to enjoy the here and now.

Why don't we begin with what is an intuitive, psychic medium, Kim?

We are all intuitive. I don't like labels. I don't even like the word psychic or medium, to be quite honest with you. I do feel that as time goes on, that title is moving away from me because I am more of a teacher of energy. And I'm very science-based in my mind. As spiritual as I am, that's as science-based as I am. I always love science because my inquisitive mind needs to know how things work. And when I couldn't really understand how I knew these things about complete strangers, I needed to research. And in my research, I found that we are all intuitive. It's the language of energy that was suppressed because there might just have been some people that didn't want us to know our power in this universe. And it's all coming back to us now. We're all getting in touch with our intuition. I always say, and I'm a very critical thinker, and I always like to use common sense. If the animals in the wild have intuition that tells them when danger is near, that guides them throughout to find food and everything else, instinctively knows how to reproduce, why wouldn't more intelligent creatures on our planet have the same, if not more, of that same wisdom inside of them.

So it's a program that we've been conditioned to let go of beginning with school, really, or beginning with the way our parents learned, and then they teach it to us. I wrote all about this in my books because it's really teaching about an unlearning of blockades, where we're just so blocked in our thinking. So it's really about what you did, Mel. It's about trusting and allowing and letting go of control. And What I teach most people when I teach people how to get in touch with their gifts is releasing the control if they can, which was what you did. You put your ego aside for the betterment of your family, especially your son. I have three sons. There's nothing we wouldn't do for our children, as you know. And I like what you said. You said everything within me knew it was the truth, a. K. A, the word resonance. It resonated with you, with your soul, with your higher knowing. And pretty much that's really how we should live our life. And following you, you teach this anyway. You just don't put a label on it. But you teach this. We're very similar in what we teach.

I agree. You just have this mystical sledgehammer in the the way that you deliver the message that makes it very hard to ignore. How did you start to realize you had this gift of speaking to and delivering messages from people's relatives that have died?

So long story short, as a child, every night, going to sleep, there was this group of statuesque people with depressed looks on their face, standing at the foot of my bed. I now know them to probably be spirits from a depression era. They were all in black. They never cracked a smile. I didn't understand who they were, what they wanted, and why were they in my room every single night of my life.

You could see them?

I saw them. They did look transparent. I can see through them, but yet I can see everything about what they were wearing and what they looked like, just a little bit transparent. And I slept with the covers over my head every night. My sister and I shared a bedroom, and she's my bigger sister just by a few years, but she was always my source of comfort because she was older and she just always guided me. And I felt safe knowing she was next to me, but I was all alone in this situation because she never saw what I saw.

Did you ever tell her what you were seeing? Absolutely. And what did she say?

Go to sleep. No, I don't see anything. There's nothing there. I would tell my dad, I'm not going in the room. When we would come home from relatives or we were out for the evening, we would come home. I wouldn't go in my bedroom. And my dad would humor me every single night, checking in the closet, checking under the bed, letting me know the Coast was clear. So I trusted my dad. No sooner did he leave the room, there they would appear as soon as he left, and my sister would fall asleep. Mommy, please, could I sleep with Daddy? No, go back. They were very strict about that. Having my sister was a huge source of comfort. I would keep her up at night with every distraction I could. I told her to teach me how to spell. I mean, what was I, seven maybe? Five to seven? Please teach me how to spell. And I'll never forget her teaching me the word elephant because it was the longest And I just kept her up because I didn't want to contend by myself. And I was up most of the night contending with this group of people.

There were about five of them in total. And I started looking at relatives. My dad's from Europe, from Italy. And I started looking at photo albums as I got older. And I said, Gee, this is the attire that these people always were wearing. They went away in my teenage years, we had moved into a new home, and they followed me for a bit, and then I didn't see them. Through my teenage years, my life was completely normal. And I say I was a mere mortal at that time.

Let me ask you a question. You were scared because you were a little kid, but did you have any... Other than covering your head, did you try to talk to them? Did you yell at them? I don't know how I would deal over the course of five or six years, looking at the end of my bed and seeing ghosts.

It's true. So as a child, as you know, children looked to adults for body language, for a smile, crack a smile, to show their approval, to show that they're kind. They never showed any emotion, but just like that, just nothing. Then they would follow me to school. What? I never saw them. I felt them following me. We would walk to school. And I always felt like I had these people. You know when you go up a flight of steps and you just feel like something's behind you? Everyone has experienced that once in their life. And walking through a dark alley, you feel like some weird vibe. I've always felt this energy around me, and I just assumed it was them. Back then, I don't know. Parents really didn't didn't pay much mind about things like this. I think now they're more open. Parents are more open to their children when they say they see a man. I get emails daily of parents telling me their children sees a man with a black hat, which is not always so great. I understand it now way more than I ever did. Of course, we didn't know any of this.

What do you understand now?

What I understand now is these were either trapped souls connected to the property. My father and my uncle built that home. I don't know about the land, or they might have been immigrants to my dad's family that I don't know, that may have gone back generations. Definitely from the depression era. The one man was gaunt. He looked like he really could use a good meal. They looked just so miserable, honestly. So I We know now that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, as we know by science, it can only change form. And energy cannot be destroyed. So if our soul is made up of pure energy, which it is, how can we be destroyed in our consciousness? So it's consciousness that can't be destroyed, literally. Again, I go back to energy because energy is real. We use it every day of our lives. We don't see electricity. We don't see the cell phone signals, but yet we use them as they translate through the receivers that we have in our homes, right? We have fuse boxes for our electrical. We have cell phone towers for the signals. And we have mediums for the energy, the signal of deceased consciousness or even consciousness itself, because I learned that I am able to communicate with people in a coma or people with Alzheimer's or dementia who's not really in their bodies, but their consciousness is free.

So I'm able to connect with that. I only learned that throughout the years of doing this for so many years.

I remember when you were on When you were on my talk show and we met three years ago, you said something that I found very comforting. I turned to you before you started reading people and talking to the spirit guides that had come into the room. I said, now, Are there dead people in this talk show room? And you were like, Oh, yeah. Everybody always has one or two people with them. And I found that to be very comforting. Is that true that we tend to have somebody that is with us as we're going about our day-to-day life, whether we feel them there or not?

It's absolutely true. They are always there as a frequency.

Why do you think those five souls followed you? Do you think they sensed that you could connect with the energy?

Great question. They absolutely can sense it. And again, there's a little bit of a backstory. Prior to being able to seeing, I even backtrack it a few more years when it was Christmas Eve and my mom was in the kitchen cooking, big Italian feast, and And I was a curious little girl, as I still am. I found a safety pin on the floor right by the Christmas tree, and I wanted to see what would happen if I stuck it in the electrical socket. And I did. And my body shot across the room. I got electrocuted. My right arm was completely charred. My mother rushed me to our family doctor, who at the time was always on call, as you know. They don't have that. That's a gift that we don't have anymore. He He said to my mother, Meet me at my office. Actually, that doctor saved my life, too, several times. And he wrapped my arm in this ointment called Silverdeen. And he told my mother that I may or may not have any scarring. Now, the only reason I know that this opened up something in my auric field, which everybody has an energy field around them.

It was a tear in my aura. That's how they got in. And the only reason I know this is years later, I picked up a book in the library when I couldn't control the voices and the information that was coming at me. I needed to find some information on this, and there wasn't much. But there was a book called The Link, L-I-N-K. I bought this book on Amazon. I have it. I opened to a random page. Nothing is a coincidence. And the page said that most mediums have found that prior to the age of 10, they were hit with high doses of electricity, such as being struck by lightning, electrocution. How did I open to that page? They wanted me to know. They wanted me to know because I needed to understand. And I had a pact with God because I was raised Catholic, and I needed to know that I wasn't going against my religion and what the Bible says, which it does say, Do not consult with mediums. It does say that in the Bible. And I went to Catholic school for a short time, and I was pretty familiar with the Commandments, and I needed to know.

And I said, If you want me to do this work, I need you to work with I need to know that I'm not doing anything against you, God, and that I need to know that I'm not going to be condemned to hell at that time. I didn't know much. I'm a seeker of the truth. I now know that we all have this ability to connect with energy, and that's all this is, is energy, honestly.

I have so many questions to ask you.

Okay, shoot, shoot.

I'm all yours. So you get electrocuted as a little girl. You start to see these five spirits and energetic consciousness at the end of your bed. You then move and you sense that they're following you, but they don't come to the new house. What is it that happened as you got older that made you realize, Holy cow, this isn't some weird thing. I actually Can I have a gift. What was that moment?

Okay, so fast forward. My sister had called me one day. Now, we're both adults. We both have our children. Everything is normal. I don't see dead people. I don't hear dead people. My life is normal. When I married my husband, my life was normal. I wasn't a psychic. I wasn't seeing dead people. Nothing, nothing like that. My sister said, There's this psychic going to be in town. Would you like to go? I said, Oh, yeah, that sounds like fun. We go see this woman. She was not giving readings. She was giving a lecture. And her lecture was about how she walked into her mediumship gifts after her sister passed away. When we walked in, she had us sign this mailing list with our phone number and our address. I didn't think anything. Okay. Phone number, address. My sister signed it right after me. About a month later, I get a call from that same woman telling me that she lived in my area. Actually, she did. She lived pretty much around the corner from me. And then she told me, I I am a medium, and that I was meant to do big things with my gifts, and that she was giving classes on medium-ship.

Now, first of all, I am a New Yorker. I don't trust. I don't fall for anything. I'm very level-headed as much as I know. And I was very skeptical. I'm like, Oh, this lady needs students. She's targeting me. I live around the corner. I said, Oh, I don't have childcare. Her classes were in the morning. And I had just had my third son. I had no sitter. I was a stay at home mom. And she said, I'm I'm going to let you slide, but I won't forget about you. So I called my sister. I said, did that woman, Ali, call you for her classes? She said, no, I didn't get a call. Okay. One year later, she calls me again. She said, I am being pushed. You need to take my class. She said, but guess what? It's not in the morning. It's at the night. My classes are at night. You have no excuse. So now I didn't know what I would see. She She really did not take no for an answer at all. So I did go to her class, and I didn't know if I was going to see chickens getting their heads cut off or voodoo.

I didn't know what this was. So I looked around, I saw everybody look normal, and I was ready to bolt out the door if I saw anything that did not resonate. She was a nice Jewish woman. So I looked at, where does religion fit into this? That was my question. I went to 12 classes in total. Every time, there was once a month that she invited us to read each other, and I never went. I never went to that. I didn't want to read anybody. So she wouldn't stop. She's telling me that my name will be well known. I didn't believe a word she said. None of it. You're meant to do this. You're going to be... So anyway, I'm done with her classes. Another month later, she calls me to do one of her psychic fairs. I said, I don't read. She said, Yes, you do. I said, No, I don't read. I said, Holly, did you ever see me come to any of your classes and do readings. She said, No, you never showed up. I said, So why are you calling me? I can't do it. She said, Okay. I didn't do the fair.

Within that month, that's when the water faucet turned on. I was hearing everybody in the heavens as I would do mundane tasks. I was blow-drying my hair. I was vacuuming. I was washing dishes. And this is what I would hear. Hi, my name is Lisa. I died in a car accident. Hi, my name is Tracy. Please get in touch with my mother. And I'm like, no, this can't even be real. I'm imagining this. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, and I had to call her. She said, I've been expecting your call. I said, well, you know what I'm about to say? And she laughed. She's deceased now anyway, by the way, this wonderful woman who was such a catalyst on my journey. I said, Holly, how do I stop the voices? She said, you can't. I did her next psychic fair. I was never more terrified in my life. After the first reading, it hasn't stopped, and I've been on this journey ever since. And that's my story.

Wow. Wow.

I mean, there's a lot more in between, but I gave you the cliff notes.

Well, what I love about it is you had to do that moment of letting go and leaning in. That's something bigger that cannot be explained is actually what's meant for you. I've heard you on the stages that you speak around the world talk about how you started as a waitress in Denny's, and then from waitressing at Denny's, pursued a dream that you had of being on television. As a fellow former waitress, I would love to start there.

Yeah, waitress at Denny's, full uniform, name tag to prove it.

I forgot they had uniforms.

Full uniform.

What was your favorite thing on the menu? Oh, gosh.

I love the pancakes. You know what? Just like, simple. It's so funny how our steps are ordered, I think, in in my life. And so often, I remember being a waitress at Denny's. I remember feeling, and maybe someone listening to us can relate to this right now, you have this feeling inside of you like, there's something more I'm supposed to do, but you don't know what it is yet, and you doubt it might be possible. I remember being waitress at Denny's and just feeling like I have these big dreams, but not quite knowing how do I believe I'm worthy of them yet? It was this big season in my life. At the same time, Mel, the kitchen at the Denny's I worked at was a disaster. They would take an hour to get pancakes out. So I learned to talk to people so that they wouldn't leave. They often did leave, or they'd throw a dime and a penny on the table and leave.

As your tip, as if it's your fault. Exactly.

But it's so funny how, years later, when I ended up launching my own business, I'm like, Oh, I've got to get the operations right or nothing else matters. It's just those little things we learn along the way. But yeah, after that, I thought my whole life I would have a talk show. I watched Oprah in my living room growing up, so I thought for sure I would share other people's stories with the world. So I went into, did all the jobs, saved up all my money to pay through Pay For School and push grocery carts in the grocery parking lot, slice meat in the deli, all those fun jobs, and then found myself in what I thought was my dream job, working in TV news, and I thought, this is it, right? And what I didn't I realized was I was about to enter this huge season of setback in my life of self-doubt. I have a skin condition called rosacea, and for me, it started getting really red, really bumpy, and I would be anchoring the news live thinking like, Okay, this is it. This is it. I started hearing in my earpiece from my producer, There's something on your face.

There's something on your face. You need to wipe it off. You need to... And I was live on television, right? I would glance down during the commercial break and I saw, the makeup is breaking up on my face and these big red bumps are coming through. And it started this season that felt like setback. But so often in life, the seasons that feel like setbacks are actually setups for what we're called to do.

Okay, stop right there. Did you hear that? The seasons of your life that are setbacks are often set ups for what you're called to do. I want to just make sure everybody heard that. I want to take a highlighter and also highlight something that you said about being a waitress at Denny's, and it's this. You said our steps are ordered. So can you explain what that means, particularly to somebody who's listening who may feel like, I know I'm meant for something greater. Why the hell am I at this step? And this does not feel like it is on the path of where I'm supposed to go. So what do you mean by the fact that our steps are ordered?

I believe everything in life is happening for us, even when it doesn't make sense.

What do you mean happening for us? So to somebody It's really in it, Jamie.

Yes.

What does that mean?

Let me frame it around our topic of purpose. So often people feel empty because they feel like, Oh, my purpose needs to be It needs to be my job, or it needs to be this grand thing I haven't figured out yet. But for those of us that have accomplished a goal we always dreamed of, we get to it and we're like, Oh, this isn't it. In my opinion, purpose is never this big goal necessarily. Purpose is so often when we're able to serve the person we once were or serve in a way for something we've gone through. Here's what I mean. I think our purpose can be like, Oh, wow, I went through a really freaking hard season in my life, and I now am actually realizing I'm born to be a generational cycle breaker in my family. That is an incredible purpose. Purpose can be like, Oh, I've been having a hard season for a long time. When I actually just take a minute and say hi to someone else who's lonely, maybe it's in the coffee line at Starbucks, maybe it's the the neighbor down the street, whatever it is, you feel in your gut a sense of fulfillment, a sense of alignment when you're doing something in your purpose.

And I think that the big mistake people make is they think it's this end goal, right? A lot of times when people hear my story and they're here, Oh, Denny's Waitress builds billion-dollar company, they think my purpose was to be some big entrepreneur. It wasn't? It wasn't.

What was it?

In the journey of how I did I took this massive risk, taking my makeup off on national television when I was told not to and being brave enough to be seen and helping other women realize that they're worthy and enough exactly as they are, seeing them as who they are. To me, that is my purpose. In doing that, a byproduct of that with It Cosmetics is we built a company with millions and millions of millions and millions of customers. What's wild is 5% of our customers actually have skin issues like I do. 95% don't. It's just that they felt seen and connected with something that spoke to their soul. For me, being willing to say, Here I am exactly as I am, no makeup, and all my skin issues. I think people connected with that, that feeling of, Oh, I'm enough exactly as I am.

You know what else I think is a really important part of your story? It is waitressing. It's pushing carts in a supermarket. It's working in the back house of a restaurant. That's my story, too. Helping my best friend on her paper route. Busting tables. I think when you work in retail or you work in a service job and you feel at times invisible, you start to realize how important it is to treat everybody with respect and kindness, that there is no work that is beneath you. When you can bring that level of service to the job that you have right now, even if you hate it, even if people treat you like garbage, even if the back of the house is not getting those pancakes out on time and people are angry. If you can bring a sense of grace and service and just humility to those roles, I think it changes how you show up when things start working out because you don't ever forget what it's like to be treated like shit because somebody was mad that their pancakes weren't out on time.

Yes. Also, you and I have had this experience where we've truly gotten to see and be almost Every type of person in every type of person in every type of environment. Now it's like, whether it's me building a business or you building one of the top shows in the world, one of the top shows in the world, I feel part of that was like, Oh, we understand I understand who's listening and watching you right now. I understand who real people are who bought my products. When you mentioned steps are ordered, it's like, no matter where you are in your life right now, what you're going through, I believe every piece of it, whether it's, Oh, someone just cut me off in a parking lot and screamed at me, or whatever it might be you're going through, all of those things are happening for you, I believe, so that you're amassing this toolbox of understanding and getting strong enough and equipped enough for the purpose you step into.

Amazing. Professor of Purpose, Jamie Kern-Lema, right there. That's your takeaway number one. The steps are ordered. Believe in that. This moment is helping you. It's giving you something. So that is one major tool that you used along the way. Let's go back to that moment because I think you were 28 years old, right? When you're sitting on television in Seattle, you are a local news acre, you're living the dream, you're on your way, and you are now starting to have this nightmare happen where your rosacea is breaking through on camera in front of everybody, the makeup that they put on you. And you've got people in your ear telling you, There's something wrong with your face. You're realizing, holy cow, the makeup that they've put on my face cannot cover the rosacea and the skin issues that I have. What do you do in that moment?

Well, the first thing I did was start freaking out. I literally started entering this season of self doubt, where I would be live on the air, anchoring the news, thinking thoughts in my head like, Oh, am I going to get fired? Are viewers changing the channel right now? Am I costing the company ratings? It was this big- Could you feel those moments when you could feel the makeup not disappearing?

There were moments when I used to be a commentator for CNN. I was the menopausal where I could feel the hot flash coming.

Yeah. I didn't feel it until they said it in my ear, in my ear piece. And then what would start to happen was I would get so nervous and stressed out because I kept trying to cover it during commercial because I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. So what I remember is anchoring the news live. And sometimes you have to be happy, tell this happy story, or you're serious telling. And I just remember my heart beating in my ears, hoping people weren't changing the channel. Oh, my God. And it started this It was this thing where I would spend what... It's funny. I was anchoring the news, and people think, When you're doing that, you must have all this money. But you really don't get paid much at all. I took my little paycheck that I had and started spending it on department store makeup, professional artistry makeup, drug store makeup. I couldn't find anything that worked. I had this idea one day like, Oh, if I can't find anything that works for me, there's a whole lot of other people out there that feel like makeup doesn't work for them. And it was this idea where I was like, if I could figure out how to make something that worked for me, it helped a whole lot of people.

And that was my knowing or this gut feeling. But then my head, Mel, was like, oh, but you got no money, you got no connections, no one in the beauty industry, you're unqualified. So I sat in this place, right? And we're talking about purpose. I had this gut feeling like I was supposed to go for this thing, but then my head was like, oh, but here's all all the reasons why you're not qualified to do it. Plus, you're in your dream job, right? And I sat between those two. And it wasn't until I had this big, big aha moment of why I needed to do it that pushed me over the edge.

Okay, so what is the aha moment?

Yes. So I realized one day, I'm like, this makes no sense. There are thousands of makeup companies out there. How does nothing work for me? Then I had this moment where I realized I've never seen a model with bright red, bumpy skin selling makeup. You always see these photoshopped, airbrushed models. I realized, Mel, like, wow, my whole life, I've actually loved those beauty commercials, and I love seeing the magazines, and I always aspired to look like them. But deep down, When I was on inside, they always made me feel like I wasn't enough. I had this moment. I was literally on the news set when this happened where I was like, wait a minute. What if it's not just about launching a makeup product? What if I could actually figure out how to do it, which I had no idea how, and I had no money. I was like, what if I could actually launch a product that works for me? And what if I actually put real people as models, like every age, shape, size, skin tone, skin challenge? What if I use them as models, call them beautiful, and mean it for every little kid out there who's about to start doubting themselves and every grown woman who still does.

And that deep source of pain from how I was feeling not enough and what could I do about it? That in my opinion, is one of the strongest ways to find your purpose. It's what has just destroyed you or hurt you that you've maybe made it through. And how can you now use that making it through to help someone who's going through it?

Okay. That's like a mic drop moment from our professor of purpose, Jamie Kern-Lema. So again, I like to unpack these things to make sure this is a... I always say this is not just a listening podcast, it's a doing podcast. I want to make sure nobody's left behind. Yes. And there was billions of dollars worth of wisdom that you just dropped. I want to try to unpack it for anybody that is listening to this and you have this sense that you're made for more. One of the things that I heard is look in your life and see what problems or frustrations or things that you're struggling with that feel like a setback. Jamie gave you the example of the rosacea on her skin and her inability to find something that actually could help her solve this issue of being able to cover it up so that she could do her dream job. That setback is a set up for something new. Then get out of your own selfish or self-loathing or the self-excuses and the self-pity and remind yourself that there are 8 billion people on this planet now. There are other people that are dealing with this.

And that if you can figure out how to put your energy into making this better for yourself, and you bring other people into the fold with you, you now have something that's worth working on because it helps you, and it's going to help other people. 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.