Let's talk about this exercise. Now, I had been doing this little exercise for as long as I can remember. It was like my own little secret magic trick, right? A fail-proof way to tap into happiness whenever I felt lost. I had never shared this exercise with anyone else. Well, that all changed one day in 2020. Here's what happened. My husband and I were standing in the kitchen. It was in the summer, and our daughter Sawyer, she was in her mid-20s. She walked into the kitchen. We went into the kitchen, we were cooking dinner, and we turned to look at her, and her eyes were swollen. They were so red. You know that look on somebody's face where they just look puffy? It is so clear that they have been crying for Lord knows how long. I mean, honestly, it looked like she had probably been sobbing all day long. She had been having a really tough time. Let me explain a little bit about what was going on. She had graduated from college in the middle of COVID. Maybe you had that experience, too. Maybe somebody that you love had that experience. The life that she had been looking forward to had literally imploded.

I mean, absolutely nothing was going according to plan. She had been working for four years while she was in college to save enough money to take a service trip to Cambodia after she graduated. It was canceled. Instead of living with her friends in the city, she was stuck living at home with us. You want to know how she dealt with the sadness and the depression and the disappointment and the grief? By drinking herself into the ground. She had put on extra weight. She had become really sedentary. She hated how she looked. She hated how she felt. She hated her life. She had nothing to look forward to. She had hit this point where she could no longer contain or hide the massive breakdown and downward spiral that she was in. She walks into the kitchen after clearly crying all day and said to us, I am so stuck. I'm lost. I'm miserable. I don't know what to do. I turned and I looked at her and I said, Actually, I think you do. You're just scared. She looked back at me and I said, No, I think you know what to do, and I'm going to prove it to you.

Take out a piece of paper. She did. Draw a line down the center. On the left-hand side of that piece of paper, I want you to write Two words. Happy me. Now, close your eyes and imagine a world where you remember being happy or more confident or feeling more alive. It could be a great memory from the recent past, or you might have to go all the way back to childhood, and there was this long silence. As we stood there, I could tell that she was traveling back in her mind to this other world. But all of a sudden, she exhaled and she opened her eyes and she said, The last time I remember being happy was my senior year of high school. And I said, Okay, great. I want you to write down all of the things that you see that you were doing in that world. Describe a week of your life when you were a senior in high school. She said, Oh, well, I got up at 6:30. I left the house by 7:00. I was with my friends all day and going to classes. I was so looking forward to going to college.

I was playing varsity lacrosse. I was exercising six days a week. I was only drinking two days a week on the weekends with my friends. I had a great relationship with the guy I was dating. I was home, probably for dinner with you guys four nights a week. And as she described it, I could see that world, too. I said, Great. Now, look back to the piece of paper. And on the right-hand side, I want you to describe the world that you live in right now. She sighed. She said, Well, I sleep until noon. When I wake up, I don't know what to do every day. I drink every night because I'm so depressed. I don't ever see my friends because everybody's scattered after we graduated and plus COVID. I don't have anything to look forward to. I mean, this trip to Cambodia was canceled. My job doesn't start for another six months. I'm not I'm exercising, I'm eating like crap, I sit in my bed most days, and I'm spending so much time on social media. And I said, Great. Compared those two worlds. And she got it right away. And I bet you're getting it, aren't you?

Because there are two worlds, aren't there? There's the world that you're in right now and another world that you can access When you close your eyes and you ask yourself, When do I remember being happier? See, our daughter immediately made the connection between these two worlds. And that's how easy it is to pass between them. She understood that the happier version of herself was right there for her to see. Everything that she described in the world that she lived in as a senior in high school offered the clues that she needed to bring back into her world today so that she could become happier, more confident, and feel alive again. Because here's the truth. You You do know how to be happy. That's why you miss feeling it. You can only miss feeling something that you know. And your own life experience offers a map to a world where you do feel happier today. And here's the mistake we all make. You think you need to permanently escape your life in order to be happier, to go on vacation, to blow up your relationships, to move, and change your jobs. No, you don't. All you need to do is learn how to open the door to that other world while you're still living day to day in this one, because you're already starting to think back and travel through time and tap into that world where you felt a little happier, I want to give you a very important tip that will make this exercise even easier, and it's based on research.

Here it is. All you have to do as you pass through the portal your mind and you step into this other world is find one clue. You just need one thing. One thing that you can bring back with you to this moment. That's all you need to look for. And when you and I come back, after we hear a short word from our sponsors, I'm going to walk you through this exercise together, and it's about to get downright magical. Welcome back. It's your friend, Mel. I am so glad you are traveling between worlds with me today, and I want to jump right back into this portal of happiness with you. I told you that this morning we were having a team meeting, and we were talking all about this episode, and we were also talking well about the book, A Court of Thorn or Roses. But then we got down to business. And as I started talking about the exercise, the team started to just naturally pass through the portal into other worlds in their own minds back in time when they felt happier. And so I thought, before I turned to you, I wanted to share some of the reflections that our team members had, because I think as you listen to other people describe what they discovered when they thought about, Well, when was I happier?

And what did that world look like? I have a feeling it's going to shake loose some memories for you. So let me share some of these with you. Janaya, who is one of our amazing video editors, she said, Oh, yeah, I know exactly what that world was like. I felt so much happier when I was younger. And she used the word freedom. She said, When I was younger, I just felt free. I would get up every morning, and I was with my family, and then I would go to school, and I got out of school at two o'clock. Then every day after school, I would go to dance practice, and I loved dance practice. Dance was like this creative expression of who I was, and it was so amazing. And then I would come home, and I'd have dinner with my family, and I'd go to bed, and then I'd wake up and do the whole thing all over again. And can you guess what the clue is? That she needs to bring back into her world right now. If you're thinking dance or some form of creative expression, you're exactly right. And it doesn't have to be dance every evening.

It could be take one class a month from now. It could be sign up for some series. But when you bring something from that other world into your life now, you can see how just adding that one thing suddenly energizes you, suddenly reminds you of who you are, suddenly brings something alive inside of you, and it helps you to start feeling free again. Isn't this so cool? So let me share another one with you. Maddie, who is one of our amazing video editors on the team, shared about a time in her life when she was super happy, and she was getting her MFA in Documentary Filmmaking. As she described her life, she would get up Every single day at 6:30, she would go exercise. Then she would go to class, and she felt so creatively energized. After class, she went to the same coffee shop every single day, the Thinking Cup on Newbury Street. That was her spot in Boston. She would sit there like the filmmaker that she is, and she would sit with her journal, and everybody in the coffee shop knew her and greeted her when she came in, and she felt the sense of community.

Then at night, she'd be helping some of her fellow classmates shooting their films, and she'd collapse in bed at 11:00, and then the next morning, get up and do it again. The reason why I'm telling you the details of what Maddie shared is because she had this huge epiphany on the call this morning with the team. Where she realized as she allowed herself to pass through that portal and step back into this world where she was a happier person, and then come back into the present moment and examine her life right now, she realized something amazing. She's really happy right now because her current life contains all the clues that we're in the other world. She wakes up at 6:00 in the morning in exercises. On her commute, she's always listening to some audiobook. We all know which one she's listening to right now. And she arrives close to the office by around 7:30 in the morning. And you know what she does for 45 minutes? She sits in a coffee shop with her journal. Everybody at the coffee shop now knows who she is and greets her when she walks in, and then she goes into work and she's working on creative projects, and then she She gets home, and she's with somebody that she cares about, and then she wakes up, and she does it all over again.

Those little things, those little clues that built a happy life, she has brought them to her life now. And this is so important for you to hear, because you think it's the big things, and it's actually no, just one little thing. Maddie's super happy in her life right now, and she's able to see so many similarities between that time in her life in the world where she was an MFA student and the world that she is living in right now. I want to share with you what mine looked like. At first, it was hard for me to think about it. I mean, I've done this exercise a lot, but I'm in a really good place right now. So I kept thinking, I'm happy right now. So when was I really content? Like, really just didn't feel like I needed to change anything, really in my day-to-day life, right? And all of a sudden, I realized, holy cow, it was when I was 24 years old. I was a public defender. I worked for legal aid in New York City. I was not yet married. I was living with a couple of girlfriends. I lived on the Upper West Side in New York.

This would have been around 1994. Holy smokes. I used to walk to work every single day. I did it because I really loved New York and I loved walking, but I also did it because I wanted to save some money. They only paid you $19,000 a year out of law school as a public defender working for legal aid. I lived on 68th Street, up on the Upper West Side, and I worked down at 100 Canal Street. I'm talking probably 78 city blocks. Then I would get to work, and I was in the courthouse on my feet all day. I was either in court dealing with cases, talking to clients, or I was out at Rikers Island visiting my clients, or I was racing back to the office to do something, or I was out investigating a case before a hearing. I loved always being on the move. I loved that every day was different. I loved that I didn't sit at a desk, and I loved that I was helping people. But my favorite part of the day, you want to hear what it was? Walking home. I loved walking home. I was with my best friend, Matt Myers.

He was actually one of my supervisors at work. We became amazing friends, and we would walk home every day together and walk and talk and talk and walk and talk and talk and talk in cases. And we would go from Chinatown through the Bowery, up into the village. We would walk up the East Side, on the Lower East Side. He would peel off around St. Mark's because that was the neighborhood that he lived in. I was so far from home, it didn't matter. I would keep on walking through Union Square. And somewhere around From the '30s, I would sync up with Chris, who I was starting to date. He lived in Murray Hill. And then we would walk and talk and walk and talk from the '30s all the way up to 68th Street on the West Side. I moved through all those neighborhoods. The city was alive. I felt alive. I loved being outside. It was just incredible. Absolutely incredible. And then I would wake up and do it again the next day. And here's the clues. Number one, I was getting outside every day and getting a walk. I love that. I do that first thing in the morning, and I love getting outside for a walk.

I love walking and talking with people that I care about, whether it's my husband or the group of girlfriends that I have up here now that I live in Southern Vermont. I was with friends because I lived with them, and I was doing work that was dynamic and creative and that helped people. Sounds a little like the life of your friend Mel Robbins now, doesn't it? And as I share these stories with you, I hope it's giving you a peak, a glimpse into what that other world is for you. Because it might be a small clue, something like, Boy, I used to love doing puzzles. And if I just simply got a puzzle at the library, or bought myself a puzzle, or pulled one out of that cupboard that I haven't opened in 10 years, and I put it out on the table, it is literally an invisible string that connects this world that you're in right now to that other world and the portal that you passed through where you were happier. And honestly, it could be anything. It could be memories of gardening. It could be memories of painting. It could be spending more time outdoors.

It could be the fact that when you were super happy, you were little and the family had a dog, maybe it's time that you actually lean into getting one. I'm serious. And I'm also serious about walking you through this exercise and helping you spot the clues that you find when you close your eyes and you allow yourself to go through that portal into time and step into that world where you were a happier you. And that's exactly what we're going to do when we come back. Stay with us. Welcome back. It's Mel. I'm so glad you're still here. And you know what? Maybe you've already downloaded the Court of Thorn and Roses, because now that we're talking about fantasies in different worlds, you're like, What is this thing that Mel is listening to that has got her all talking about different worlds? She is on a roll today. But I'll tell you what you have definitely been doing as you were listening to our sponsors. I guarantee you that your mind has been drifting to that other world. Maybe you're already imagining yourself doing puzzles when you were little, or twirling around in dance class, or sitting in that cafe journaling, or training for that 5K race that you used to do with your girlfriends when you used to live in the city.

And you know what? That's the whole point of our conversation today, that you can drift back to that world for yourself throughout this entire conversation. Back and forth in and out of your imagination. Isn't this cool? So now it's your turn. If you have a piece of paper or a pen that's near you, great. Pull it out. And all you're going to do is draw a line down the center of the paper. And if you don't have a piece of paper, who cares? You understand the power of your mind. I want you to just think through this with me right now. You can imagine a piece of paper. You can imagine the line down the center. You can imagine yourself writing the two words, Happy me. And now I I want you to just stop and think about a moment in time or a time in your life when you felt happier. Close your eyes. Allow yourself to travel back in time. Maybe you were really little. Maybe it was a year ago. Maybe it was a really long time ago. As you start to picture yourself in this world, Start looking around. Because now the reason why you're there is because you're there to find clues, and they are in the little details of your day-to-day life.

When did you get up? What did your mornings look like? Describe what you did during the day. Were you a student? Were you working? Were you with your friends? What were you doing? When did you go to bed? Where did you live? How did you spend your time? And what was your favorite part The start of the day. Amazing. Amazing. Now, there's a couple of things I want to point out when you start to play around with this, right? And the first thing is this. You may have an experience where you don't see yourself being happy. You may travel back in time and pass through that portal, and you don't actually locate yourself anywhere where you felt happy. And I want you to hear something. That's so normal, okay? So normal. In fact, this morning, as we were talking about this as a team, one of our team members, who is absolutely amazing, raised her hand and she said, You know what? I hate this exercise. And let me tell you why. Because I don't have a memory of being happy. My childhood was filled with so much trauma and pain, and my happiness was so contingent on how another human being was acting or not or what mood they were in, that I literally just think about survival.

Maybe that's your experience. Maybe when you close your eyes and go back in time and pass through that portal, it's one big empty space because you don't see a world where you were happy. You see a world where you were conditioned to survive, where you were just in a lot of pain, where you felt isolated, where you didn't feel safe. And here's what I want to tell you. Even if that's the world that you step back into, there are still clues. I'm going to say it again. Even if the world that you travel back to is one where you don't see yourself being happy, there are still clues. What are the clues teaching you? They're teaching you what not to do. If what you see is a world where you were so conditioned to please other people and put them first and be worried about their moods, you know that doesn't make you happy. And so if you're doing it in your life right now, you also know that taking your healing seriously and working on this pattern and changing how show up is a key to your happiness now. In fact, seeing those kinds of clues, the clues that teach you what not to continue doing, the things that you need to start taking responsibility for changing in yourself, those are some of the most powerful clues on the planet because they transform who you are at a much deeper level.

And when you start taking that on in your day-to-day life, boy, does it change your world. And the second thing that you may notice in this other world is that it's never the big things that make you happy. It's just the little things that you take for granted. And this is so important because you think that big changes are what are going to make you happy. That's not the answer. What makes you happier are the little things. Stop overcomplicating big words like happiness. I know I did for decades. Happiness is the smallest things because your whole life is made up of all the little things that you do every single day. That's how you build a happier life. So pay attention to when you wake up. The first thing you look at every morning. Taking care of your body, being kinder to yourself, enjoying a warm cup of coffee, stopping to hug your pets, or giving your loved one a huge embrace at the of the day, spending time outside in nature, or smiling when you see someone. The little things are everything because they add up to one big happy life. And that's what I want for you.

And this simple exercise is so easy to do. I am proud of you for hanging with me. I know it was a little odd in the beginning, a little woo-woo, a little fairy land, but it works, doesn't it? And it makes It makes sense, and it's true. I would love to hear what you discover. Seriously, I want to know what happens when you allow yourself to pass through this portal and step into this other world. What clues do you find? Would you share it with the rest of us? I mean, there is magic in that world that you are going to step back into. And I want to know what it is because I have a feeling that I missed out on some clues in my life. I bet if I hear yours, that I am going to go, Oh, that's another one. I just thought of another one. When I was really little, my parents were constantly working on this fixer upper where I grew up in Western Michigan. When they bought this house, it They were overgrown with trees. They reclaimed the whole yard. They put in all these gardens, and they were out there all the time.

I was always out there playing by their side as they were deadheading or weeding or splitting plants. Is it any surprise that one of the things that makes me so happy now that I'm in my life as an adult, 50 years later? Flowers. It's an invisible string to this other world, and it brings it and all the magic to my present life. I wanted to say about this is it's a very simple exercise that you can do with somebody. And this helps somebody who is either struggling with happiness and doesn't know how to get started or is struggling with confidence and is not able to take action or who is resisting the changes that you are doing and you would love to see them do. We did this with our daughter, who is now 23, and last summer when she graduated from college, really unhappy. I mean, two years of college had been imploded, and she was extremely depressed and basically just drank her way through it and graduated and was not happy. Big life change. Nothing was going according to plan. She had planned this huge trip to go to Cambodia and do a big service trip for four months.

That wasn't going to happen. Just lost. Chris and I sat with her for a couple of hours, and she's like, I don't know what to do. I'm 22. I'm stuck. I'm miserable. I don't even know how to start. I said, I actually think you do. I think you're just scared. Take out a blank piece of paper. Draw a line down the center. On the left-hand side, I want you to write Happy Me. Now, close your eyes and think about a time that you remember being happy or more confident or alive. It could be any word you want, right? And you might have to go back to childhood. Our daughter closed her eyes and she said it was senior year in high school. And I said, Okay, so write down all of the things that you were doing in a week of your life, senior year in high school. Just describe your life for me. I got up and do it in detail, everybody. I got up at 07:00 AM or 06:30. I was leaving the house by 07:00. I was with my friends all day. I was looking forward to going to college. I was playing varsity lacrosse.

I was exercising six days a week. I was only partying with friends twice a week. I was in a healthy dating relationship. I ate four dinners a night at home. Like just great. Write down what your life looks like now. I sleep till 1:00. I drink every day. I feel like I don't see my friends because everybody's scattered now that we graduate. I don't have anything to look forward to. My trip to Cambodia is canceled. I'm not exercising. Okay, compare the two. Your own life experience offers the map. And we want to overcomplicate these big words like happiness. I know I did for decades, or confidence. It's actually found in the little things. If you do this simple exercise of drawing a line down a piece of paper and you write down what life looked like in great detail, when did you wake up? When did you go to bed? How often were you friends, family? What were you doing for work, exercise? What were you eating? If you then compare that to what life looks like now, you now know what to do. And the fact is, your whole life is the little things.

It's when you wake up, it's the first thing you look at, it's what you do with your body. It's how you greet your spouse. It's how you talk to yourself. It's what you say to yourself when you look in the mirror. It's the mood that you walk in to work with intentionally. It's how you greet your animals or your roommate when you end the day. It's the tone of voice that you use. That's your whole life. And if you were to just take the time and intentionally write down a few simple things that you do when you're happy in life and you were to focus for the next seven days on just adding one of those in a day, you would be very surprised how getting some of the little things right actually starts to turn your life in a completely different direction. So powerful. Mel, it's been an absolute pleasure having you back on the show. The Mel Robbins podcast is out right now. You can go and listen, subscribe, share. Please, please, please go and do that. Mel, I love sitting down with you. Today was that perfect balance, as I was talking about before, of playing tennis, going back and forth, and at the same time, just getting some really practical, insightful advice from you on step by step, strategic, systematic breakdown of how to do things.

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a dear friend to me and Ravi. I hope me, you, Chris, all of us get to spend lots more time together, genuinely, or even if it's not lots more time, but it's deep time together. That would make me very happy. And I wish you all the best on defeating the campaigns of misery for yourself and everyone else in the world through your show, through your books, on Audible, through your book in the 5-Second Rule, and also for helping me start working on my campaigns of misery as well. So thank you so much, Mallee. Deeply appreciate you. Very grateful to you. I love you, Jay, and I can't wait to see you acting. Today, we've got brand new research, everybody. Yes. And we are going to introduce you to very simple behavior changes that you can institute immediately immediately that will improve your life, all grounded by research. And some of them, quite shockingly, weird and surprising.

Yes. And these are all brand new, just released, amazing, legit studies. So we're super excited to share them.

Okay. What is the first change we need to make?

Definitely. So there was recently a huge brand new study from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, U Chicago, all about the power of random acts of Kindness. This study is called A Little Good: A Little Good: Goes an Unexpectedly Long Way: Underestimating the Positive Impact of Kindness on Recipients.

Okay, but we all know that acts of kindness are things that make us feel good, but why is this brand new research something we have to pay attention to? In the year ahead, acts of kindness people all day long. How come we have to pay attention to this?

Definitely. What the researchers really looked into is, why do we not do random acts of kindness? Because what they found is they're actually pretty uncommon. We think that, Oh, we just do this. We all know what to do. We don't. Most people do not do random acts of kindness. And it's because we actually don't think it's going to matter to other people. Oh. Yeah. And what the researchers found is it does. No matter how tiny, a random act of kindness makes a massive difference for someone else, and you are happier as a result of doing it.

So that's interesting. So we We know that we should be doing this. But what you're saying is that we don't do this, and this is where the insight comes in, is that we assume it's not going to matter.

Exactly.

And a random act of Find this, it's like the littlest thing. Smiling at somebody, putting your arm around somebody, waving somebody into traffic, even tipping somebody that's making your coffee and looking at them and saying thank you. These are all small things that make a difference, and we think it doesn't make a difference. And so I think that's where the learning is, at least for me. Yeah, definitely. Is that you're not doing it not because you don't think it's an important thing to do. You're not doing it because you don't think it matters.

Yes, exactly. And the New York Times picked up this brand new study, ran a huge article on it, and there were thousands of comments of people sharing their stories of random acts of kindness. And it's a reminder that these do matter to people.

Here's the interesting twist about the story, and it's why Tracy was so excited to talk about this particular piece of research. The stories were not from people who were like, Oh, I started a Pay It forward chain. No. Which, by the way, you know how everybody starts doing the Pay It forward chains, typically around the holidays, where you're going to buy the coffee for the person behind you? I saw this interesting post by somebody who used to be a barista who says, That is a complete nightmare for operations because it gets confusing whose drink is whose and what got paid for, and people don't know how to grab the drink. And then if you want to do something nice in a super busy coffee shop, look at the person making the coffee, tell them thank you and how much you appreciate them, and give that minimum wage person a tip that is the cost of a cup of coffee that you would have bought for the stranger behind you, which I thought was really interesting. But this piece of research, which really impacted me, is all of the comments were not about people bragging about their acts of kindness.

It was people sharing stories about how an act of kindness from a stranger or a teacher or somebody in their life changed the trajectory of their life.

Their entire life. Yeah.

Why don't you read that one comment that had us all just get goosebumps?

Yeah, definitely. So this is a comment that was within the article. The comment said, As a child, I lived in absolute poverty with an abusive parent. I had music teacher who one day stopped me while walking down the hall and simply said, Are you okay? I broke down. He took me to his office, fed me his lunch, and allowed me the space to pull myself together. He told me, You're in a bad spot, but it doesn't have to be your life. That small gesture gave me the hope to believe in myself and allowed me to start considering a future where the cycle of abuse and poverty don't exist. Thirty years later, he was right, and the cycles have been broken. That small moment changed my life, it changed my partner's life, and it changed my children's lives.

I want you to take a minute, and I want you to think about a moment, an act of kindness that somebody else did for you that was meaningful. And when you think about it from being on the recipient's end, from you being the one, even if it's just as simple as you were running super late for something, and traffic was monstrous, and a stranger waved you in with a smile, how that makes your energy shift. That's what I want you to think about when it comes to this brand new research. Please act of kindness, all of us, start incorporating it into our day to day lives.

All right, what's next? Okay, great. So this second piece of research is very exciting as we think about the new year is coming. A lot of us want new fitness routines, but it always seems to be easier to talk about creating that new routine than actually implementing it, especially when you're busy like you and I both are. This is a brand new study that is called Less Gym Time, Same Results.

I'm down. Less Gym Time, Same Results. Let's go, people.

What do we do? Brand new A big study from researchers at Edith Callen University in Australia, along with whole research teams in Japan and Brazil. Listen to this. All you need to do to build your strength is do what's called the E-Centric muscle contraction, a. K. A. The second half of any exercise.

Okay, I don't know what you're talking about.

Imagine that you were standing up to sit down in your chair or to squat.

Okay.

It's simply the motion of the sitting down part, not the standing up.

Okay, so let me see if I'm getting this right. So you basically say that so many of us are losing the benefit of certain things we do all day long, for me, plopping into a chair.

Yes.

I let Gravity do the work. I do not consider sitting in a chair exercise. Are you telling me that this study says that I can consciously sit in a chair differently and I will be exercising? Yes.

It says that one muscle contraction in this downward movement for just three seconds a day can increase muscle strength if you do it each day.

What? Okay, so you're not even necessarily talking about how if you're doing bicep curves, how people are like, you got to slow down and not just flump the weight down.

And that is true. And in the research, they did use bicep curves to say people who just did the downward and then put their weights down, and then maybe they just got them back up, but it wasn't part of the motion. Yes. In exercise, they're saying you can cut your routine in half by just doing the second half of each exercise, but you can apply this in your life for passive exercise.

Okay, I'm down with passive exercise. I remember when my mom found this revolutionary way of exercising where you literally lay on a table and they strap your feet into things and they lift your legs for you. I'm like, I'm pretty sure that's not exercise, but if it works for you and it gets you there, great. But so I'm going to unpack this because there's two benefits to this. Passive exercise, everybody. What was the fancy word? Eccentric. Eccentric. So it's true. When I do strength training, I focus on lifting up the weight. I don't get intentional about resisting it dropping down.

And the lifting up doesn't seem to matter that much, according to the research.

Whoa. Yeah. Whoa. Now, let's do the chair thing. So I want to try this. So I'm standing up.

Okay.

And normally, when I go to sit down, I just plop down.

Yeah. You just It went right into the chair right now.

Yeah, gravity did the work. And the chair took the beating. Yes. Okay. So now I'm going to stand up, and I'm going to-You are slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly Okay, now my shins are engaged.

Great. And now I'm holding. You're holding down for one, two, three.

But also this is like an ab exercise. My butt is like an inch above the chair, and this is like a squat.

The research is saying if you can once per day for three seconds, slowly chair sit, you have just exercised building your muscles.

I'm doing this.

Could be easier than a whole weight training, New Year's resolution.

My life has just been changed by passive exercise research. Ladies and gentlemen, Tracy. A genius. Thank you. So we've got acts of kindness, remembering how profound they are for somebody, even just a smile. Oh, you know what The act of kindness that I do all the time whenever I see somebody that has their nails done, particularly the tips and the cool stuff and the designs, I always complement them. And the reason why is I know that they took the time to do it. And try this, complement somebody's nails. You will see somebody light up like a Christmas tree when you complement their nails. They feel seen, they feel acknowledged. It's a simple way to do it. Okay.

What do you think of my sparkly nails?

Oh, Tracy, with the gold. You are not a nail polish person either. No, I'm not. Well, show them to the YouTube community. It's gold, everybody. For Christmas. All right. Next study.

So this study, when I first read it, I was a little bit floored by it.

Floored in the, this is stupid or floored? Because there's a mix.

It felt stupid, and I cannot believe how big of an impact and how big this study is for what it is, but I think this is a very simple thing that anyone can do for one second each day.

Wait, one second?

One second.

Well, I think five seconds can change something. You are taking it down, Tracy.

This one thing is going to give you an improvement in mental well-being for eight hours, and it works in healthy people. It works in those with depression. It works in those with all different kinds of mental health challenges. Here is the study. This was a huge study in the UK at King's College, London, huge reputable research university that was published in scientific reports.

Can I just stop you? Yeah. Because I'm trying to think of what this is.

Okay.

I don't think you're going to get it right.

One second, eight hour.

Orgasm? No. No? Okay. No. I can't think of anything else.

So this study took place across a four-year span. They collected data of 20,000 assessments, and they had global participants in this study. And do you know what they found, Mel?

That would improve my life for eight hours after just doing this for one second. No.

The study is called Feeling Cherpy. So in this study, what's really interesting, too, is you might think, Okay, You're out in nature. That's the benefit. But no, they isolated. It is not about trees. It is not about plants. It is not about being by the water. It works if you listen on an app.

Really?

There is something about the sound of birds. You can go on YouTube, you can listen to a bird song app, you could get outside. But that deeply resonates with us, even at a subconscious level, for eight hours of improved mental well-being up to eight hours.

That's incredible. You know what? It reminds me up here in Vermont, when my in-laws owned this house, there was a clock that used to hang in the kitchen, and every single hour was the photo of a different bird. And when the clock would hit the hour, the chirping of the bird would happen. And it didn't matter how many people were in the kitchen. Everybody would stop and turn toward the clock. And so on some level, this seems like one of those studies where you're like, honestly, who the hell even got this idea? But if they've got more than 26,000 assessments. Over four years. Over four years, there's something here. And I I just wonder because I wonder if this has to do with evolution and the fact that if you think about our ancestors truly navigating and migrating and following patterns of nature and wind and stars and the migratory patterns of birds. That I wonder if there is this connection. And I agree. I love the sound of birds, except for a crow. I don't like a crow. But if I hear a songbird chirping, it does cause a lift in mood.

Yeah. That's incredible.

Wow. So now I'm sitting down mindfully. I'm listening for birds.

To put it on YouTube after your episode of the Mel Robbins podcast.

Maybe we should just play some birds.

Let's play the bird sound.

Okay, great. What else you got for us?

Well, now that we're so grounded after our bird sound, there is a huge brand new A just published study from Georgetown Medical Center, published in the JAMA Psychiatry Journal, which is a really big, prestigious journal. So this research is legit.

My dad used to get that. The journal, I think it's the American Medical Association? Probably. I can't believe I heard about that.

So this is legit. They compared in people who have anxiety, taking Lexapro versus doing mindfulness-based stress reduction, which often looks like a body scan or Gratitude journaling.

Now, by body scan, you don't mean climbing into an MRI?

No. I mean, how is my body feeling right now?

So a lot of times in yoga, they'll use this relaxation technique in a class where you're like, scrunch up your feet, relax them. Scrunch your ankles, relax them. Flex your quads, relax them. That's a way to body scan. So that's one example. What's another example they use?

Gratitude journaling. Really? Yes. That's a powerful example of mindfulness-based stress reduction.

Okay. So they studied lexapro, and then they also studied these mindfulness techniques that bring you into your body and into the moment.

Yes. And there are a number of them, but those are just two to highlight. It's the gratitude journaling. And what they found is the drop in anxiety was equal between Lexapro and just doing these deliberate mindfulness-based stress reduction This is like a gratitude journal.

Wow. I think I have a hunch for why that might be. Why? Well, because as somebody who has dealt with and felt anxiety for almost my entire life, I mean, I have it under control now, and I profoundly understand it. So I'm annoyed by it, but I'm not scared by it anymore. What's interesting is that anxiety, as we know, is an alarm. An anxiety is signaling that something's up and you need some reassurance. And anxiety also typically takes you immediately into the future that something bad is about to happen. If you're directing your mind to pick up a pen and to start writing what you're grateful for, you're activating a part of your mind that's different from the part of the mind that takes over when you're anxious. And so it's a way for you to almost like shortcut in your own mind this skill of pulling yourself into the present moment. And if you are having a panic attack or you're anxious, you're not in the present moment. Exactly. And so this makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, definitely. And the research still emphasizes that there's a need for medication and for practices, but in conjunction can have a really, really powerful effect, especially in how your brain actually changes what areas are active.

Well, and the other thing that I've found personally and that we know based on the research, is that the more that you practice these strategies, whether it's doing a body scan of your own body in the moment, whether it's gratitude journaling, whether it's certain forms of breathing, whether it is redirecting your thoughts. The other exercise we talk about a lot is the five senses, where in a moment where you feel anxious, you say, Well, what can I smell right now? What do I see in front of me? And by describing those five senses, again, you are interrupting that part of the brain from taking over, signaled by the alarm, and you pull yourself into the present. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Yeah, definitely.

But I love knowing. Why do I love knowing that researchers at Yale have confirmed that? Because a lot of this is common sense.

A lot of it is common sense. But I think there's something about knowing your time spent in your gratitude journal is worth it.

That it matters.

It matters.

It really does.

Yeah.

All right. What else you got for us? This is really great.

So we've done the act of kindness. You've sat in your chair very, very, very, very slowly. You have listened to your bird sound. Now we have written down what we have gratitude about. This next one is super interesting, and it is about willpower. A big study from UPenn in Michigan looked at 20,000 high schoolers as they studied for and took the SAT exam. Okay. What they found, taking into account socioeconomic status, all of their prior achievements throughout high school, even, what matters the most for their study plan and their scores is if they didn't rely on willpower and set themselves up with strategies to better be able to study.

So you're saying if the students didn't do what I did or didn't do what I see my kids doing, which is basically you got the laptop open, you got the phone on, you got piles of books all around you, and you're just going to try to plow through it. If instead you get deliberate about chunking it out, putting the phone to the side, having deliberate blocks of time to study that you're going to do better on the test.

Yeah. Why? In particular, the ones they mentioned was disabling your cell phone.

Okay, so turn the phone off. If you're serious about performing better, you got to turn the phone off when you're preparing. Okay, that's number one.

Setting up a distraction-free place to get your work done.

Setting up a distraction-free place. I'm starting to smile, Tracey, because yesterday, Tracey and I were going over the final draft to our newsletter that goes out twice a week. It's amazing. Just go to melrowins. Com to sign up for it. Tracey was trying to get me to focus.

Mel was doing some online shopping while writing the newsletter to you guys, She tabs open.

And so Tracy was so awesome. She, without skipping a beat, you didn't even look at me. You just reached your hand over and shut the laptop and then shoved it away from me. I did. You did what this study is telling. And do you know how quickly we wrapped up the final oven?

Yeah, we focused right in and an awesome newsletter went out. Totally. Yeah. And then the other strategy as well, in addition to distraction-free and disabling your cell phone, is creating a schedule to study.

So take a look at the week. If you've got a big project or you got something and schedule in blocks of time where you're going to go to that distraction free thing and you're going to turn off your cell phone. And that if you were to do that, did they find anything about how it also took less time or just that you were more effective? More effective, yes.

And one thing they found that did not work was when people said that they willed themselves to study. Willpower did not lead to results because willpower fades. We can't rely on willpower. And while this is about the SAT, you could probably generalize these results for anything where high performance or studying or preparation is needed.

So are you suggesting that sitting on the couch with Netflix on and my laptop open is not a good way to research podcast episodes?

Probably. Depending on how long you want it to take, if you want to study more efficiently, faster, and just perform better, yeah. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb. Go into your other room. Shut the laptop. Shut the laptop. And also look at your calendar in the morning and say, What am I going to get done today? Simple strategies lead to a huge result.

And again, I think that these are the things that in the back of your mind, we go, Duh. But having these validated studies, 20,000 high school students, why wouldn't you do this unless you just want to shoot yourself in the foot and make life harder?

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

What else you got? Great. So now we have number six. This is a really interesting study that once you hear it, you're going to resonate with this in your own life. And it's about smell and food recalling a memory instantly when you smell something that brings you back to an old time and place. Okay. So this is a study out of Lancaster University in the UK, brand new study, where they actually asked older people who, at this point in their life, maybe they're not having as many exciting experiences for a really amazing memory of their past. And they created something for them to smell and taste that took them back to a big moment. They actually 3D printed these tastes and smells on a little Listerine strip type thing. So crazy research.

Like the taste of your favorite ice cream treat from a vendor?

I think your wedding, the one couple, it was the food at their wedding. They were able to taste it. Or someone who had a curry tasting one, they took them back to that memory, strawberries from a day when they were young, and instantly people were vividly transported back to this memory. Instantly. And the researchers say this is a very powerful implication for creating happiness hacks. If you knew that in the past, you had the best vacation, the best memory, you can instantly access that deep memory by smelling that smell, having that food.

That makes a lot of sense. I My wheels are spinning because I'm thinking about my friend Pete Sheehan, who made me a cup of tea once, and he was very particular about how he made it because he said only his mother has ever been able to make tea that tastes as good as this certain way. And what I bet is I bet it brings him back to his childhood.

Yeah.

Now, what's interesting about this, because this research that you're talking about in terms how taste and smell cues memory, this is specifically applied to very positive memory. Very positive, yes. And it's really cool when you stop and think about the fact that you can, as you said, hack happiness by bringing very positive memories. I remember a really interesting story that has always stuck with me because we know that this is true based on trauma research, that smell in particular, can trigger a trauma response. I believe it was in the book about trauma that was written by a PhD medical doctor talking about how trauma can immediately bring you back to that just terrible thing that happened. And so the researcher or the psychiatrist was talking about how he was treating a high school student who had had severe abuse. And all of a sudden, This kid had gone from being a really great student and doing well in class to almost flunking out of this math class and being really disruptive in this math class. And it was very uncharacteristic of this kid to act this way, particularly in the math class. And so the therapist leaned in to try to figure out what the heck was going on.

And what he discovered was this, that the math teacher had recently switched his cologne, and he was wearing cologne that was the same cologne that this kid's abuser had worn.

Wow.

Just the math teacher coming up behind him, and the smell of that would trigger all of the trauma, which, of course, made him agitated and untrusting and not able to pay attention. The therapist got the math teacher to stop wearing the cologne. Issue gone.

Wow.

And so we know, based on research, that this is true around trauma and negative experiences. I think it's really, really encouraging to hear that smell conjures up positive experiences. In fact, I'm thinking about the fact that my grandmother used to wear a particular perfume. My father used to wear a particular cologne, and whenever I smell it or smell traces of it, I immediately remember them. Oh, this is so cool. Didn't you have a friend that did this with her wedding? Yeah, definitely. Intentionally?

What happened? Yeah. So I'm going to be getting married this year, and I was talking to someone who just recently had their wedding, and I asked if she had any advice for me. And she said something that I have never heard before. She said, Figure out what your smell is going to be at the altar of your wedding ceremony, because that is a smell that for the rest of your life can transport you back to that moment. She said she picked out a very specific flower floor, one of her favorites, with her favorite smell, and did a massive arrangement right where she was going to be standing at the altar during her wedding ceremony. She even sprayed something, a smell there, so that she said for the rest of her life, she can instantly transport into that memory. She said to me, I highly recommend, more than anything else, that you do that. Even not just for weddings, for any big moment of your life where you know that you're going to want to look back at this forever, create a signature scent. Know what your smell is going to be, and you will go back to that forever.

Speaking of smell, my cat, Noodle, just walked in.

Noodle has been giving his signature scent to all of your rugs lately. Yes.

He's been really naughty. We've got this new puppy, as you may know, and so he has got a signature scent that he sprays around. All right. You know, that's interesting because you think about marking rituals with a certain cake or a certain this or a champagne. But getting intentional around the type of flower or the perfume that you wear or those sorts of things, that's super cool.

Yeah, definitely. And you can apply that right now about things going forward or about any positive memory that you want to remember.

Okay, cool. What else?

Okay, great. So we're getting near the end of these new studies. This one I thought was so much fun. It's a study from Indiana University University, the University of Connecticut and Duke. Here's what it's about. It's about those mundane secrets that we hide from the closest people in our life. That means, here's what the researchers define mundane secrets as. Hiding small online purchases, foods that you don't want your partner or friends to know that you eat, or things like watching a TV show ahead of your partner when you guys are doing it together and they don't know that you're sneaking ahead.

And then you sit there pretend that you haven't when you watch the episode. I can't do that. I can sneak ahead, but when the episode comes on, I can no longer sit there and pretend that I haven't seen it. That's the part where the gig is up for me.

So the researchers found that 90% of people have recently kept one of these everyday consumer behaviors a secret from a very close person in their life, a friend or their partner. And they report, you know what? My partner probably wouldn't care if they knew I watched ahead or I snuck a piece of cake, but they keep it a secret. 90% of us have these tiny little guilty secrets.

Now, is this something we should do? Because everything that you've recommended so far is additive. So yes, I am guilty of watching a show ahead and not telling Chris, but I always confess when we're sitting there. But they also... Go ahead.

What's interesting is they actually found this is not a bad thing. It is okay to have your little guilty pleasures. You can hide little things from your partner. This is not about being dishonest. Listen to this. Tiny feelings of guilt, which don't hurt anybody, actually drives you to want to be better to your partner.

Well, that makes sense because guilt has two forms: destructive, which is the guilt that you use against yourself, where you just beat yourself up and make yourself feel bad, and then the guilt that is really productive because it motivates you to want to do better. And so are you that if, let's say, I'm trying to think of an example.

I can give you an example that the study researchers found very common. Okay. What they found common is usually both partners do the same secret behavior, and they hide it from the other. And a Very common one is around diet. Okay. Like, both partners are vegetarians when they're together and they secretly eat meat, not together.

What?

They said this little secret might propel for both partners to try to show up in a bigger way because they feel bad about this when they're both doing it most of the time. Watching a show ahead, Chris might be doing the same thing. It's very common that both people do this and propels you guys to show up and invest more. And maybe it's not the worst thing in the world.

Wow. Okay, so what's the takeaway? Don't feel guilty.

The first takeaway is if you, like 90% of people, have made impulsive online purchase that your partner doesn't know about, or you snuck a piece of cake, or you're watching ahead on the TV show, first off, don't beat yourself up about it because the research shows they are probably doing it, too. Like, your partner is probably doing this.

That is killer.

Yeah.

So don't feel bad about that Amazon box showing up and you quickly sneaking it into the back of your closet so that nobody knows that you, yet again, ordered another A pair of pants. Yes.

And this is not about betrayal. This is not about shopping addiction. This is about, they're calling it mundane things, things that do not affect your partner. It does not affect your partner that you went and had the extra piece of cake or that you went and ordered another T-shirt for yourself.

Or ate the gluten amazing bread at the dinner with your friends, but came home and ate the cardboard bread that was there.

Yeah. And I think also, as we go into the new year, a lot of people might do challenges with others. I know you've talked about Taking on a big fitness challenge with Chris. And there might be times when you slip up and don't want to say, and that is okay, is what the researchers are saying. As long as it doesn't hurt anyone, it could be okay.

It sounds like it's more than okay. It sounds like it amplifies you wanting to show up. This is so cool. So far, we've covered seven things, how important it is to add random acts of kindness, even just smiling at people complimenting their nails, telling people that you appreciate them. Here's another one. If I ever see somebody cleaning a public bathroom, I always stop and look in the eye and say, Thank you so much for taking care of us. That's great. And most people are floored. I love passive exercise.

Sit down slowly in that chair once per day.

Remember, everybody? We can- once per day. We can literally... I'm doing it now. It's a squat. That's what it is. You are going to get an inch above the chair and hold it for three 20 seconds. Yes. That's a legit squat is what I'm doing because my quads are fully engaged. Okay. Sit on down. Just sat down because now you can hear my voice shift because I'm not efforting anymore.

That is backed by researchers from Australia, Japan, and Brazil. Just sit down slowly in your chair once a day.

Don't lift the weights, everybody. Slow and lower them, and you will be ripped. Birds. Birds are something we're going to add in. Who knew? I love this.

Listen to a bird sound for up to eight hours of just a better day.

Well, you're not saying, Listen to birds for eight hours. You're saying, If you just listen to birds chirping for a second or two. Yeah.

Eight hours of benefits. What?

Okay.

And then the fourth one is the mindfulness practice. That study out of Georgetown around bringing in some mindfulness into your day, like a gratitude journal, can cause as much reduction in anxiety as as taking an antidepressant.

And we just did this episode right before this one?

Yeah, last week.

Oh, on Monday.

Last Monday.

Oh, a week ago, we did this episode about doing nothing. And in it, I said I recommended that we set an alarm in our smartphones for 2:13 with a little note that says, Stop, take a breath, do nothing. I even had a little song that I play when it happens, and that's an act of mindfulness. And one other thing that comes to mind, I know in Tim Ferriss's big book, Tools of Titans, he crunched the data on 250 interviews that he had done with billionaires and world changers and Every single one of them had one habit that they all shared, right? Yeah. And it was a mindfulness practice. Yeah. So I know you know this, but when you start to understand how compelling the research is, not to me about how it changes the neural pathways in your brain, makes you a more positive and calm person, but to also know that in research studies, it has the same effect of dropping anxiety by 30% as prescription medication. That's worth paying attention to.

Yeah, definitely. Then our study number five was, do not rely on willpower for success, for accomplishment, and for getting important work done. Go on, do disturb, help someone have you stay accountable, go into a quiet room, just like those students who succeeded on the SATs did.

Awesome. Schedule in success. Don't just muscle through it. What else we got? Oh, smell. I like this one. Yeah. Think about putting more positive smell associations into your life, whether it's bringing positive memories to mind or it is creating positive experiences by getting intentional about the smell. I love this.

Yeah, definitely. And then we had our one, sneaky TV show watching, sneaky meat eating.

So just giggle about it.

Stop making yourself feel bad. Stop making yourself bad because everyone else is doing it, too.

And there's one final change.

Yeah. So this piece of research is something that researchers actually show is the easiest habit to make the largest impact in your life.

And what is it? You can tell them what it is.

It's being kind to yourself.

This is so profound that I want to dedicate the next episode to just the research. Yeah. On how to be kinder to yourself. Because this recent study I know, and the irony is, of all the things that you could change in the coming year, the research is conclusive that learning how to be kind to yourself as a daily practice has the single biggest impact on your happiness, on your meaning, on your sense of purpose. And the sad thing is, it is the one we practice the least. And this is so important that the very next episode that we drop in the Mel Robbins podcast is going to go deep on the topic of being kinder to yourself, how to make it a habit, why it matters. And we are also going to do a bonus episode with it where we're going to take people's questions about it because, yes, let's squat down on the chair, let's listen to the birds, let's structure our study time. Let's get the smells going, people. Let's be mindful. What was the first one we did? See, I've already forgotten.

The first one we did is around the random amount of kindness.

Amped up the kindness. Let's go. And kindness toward self is the biggest thing you should do, which is why we're going to talk about it in the next episode.

There's three questions you can start to ask yourself in the moment when the anxiety comes up. Instead of pushing the anxiety down, you can befriend it, and you can ask three questions. You can say, Okay, what do I notice about the anxiety? So where does it live in my body? Would you want to do it with me right now? Sure. Okay. Sure. Are you connected to the anxiety in this moment?

Not this moment, but I- Okay.

Is there something else?

I'm familiar with it, so I'm more than happy.

Well, is there anything else that might be up right now that's a protector part that you're like, I want to talk to?

It's interesting. Now that we're talking about it, I feel a little anxious.

Okay.

So it's good. I'm so programmed to run, that staying still, which is what this new house in Southern Vermont represents, this real quiet place, I feel tingly all over right now.

Okay. So there's a tingly, a desire to run, and then this little anxiety right back in the background?

Completely.

Okay, cool. Could we ask the tingliness and the desire to run to maybe just go out on the patio and have a coffee or have a cup of tea? Just take a minute just to give us a little space to talk to the anxiety. Would that be okay with them?

Sure. Okay.

So just taking a moment to check in. You can close your eyes if you want. You can breathe whatever you need, but just check in gently with the anxiety and ask, where is it in the body?

It's right here. Right in your chest? Yeah, gripping like that.

Gripping. Any other ways you would define it? Colors, shapes?

It's like My hand's like this. And I'm also really warm under my armpits, but I'm not sure if that's menopause shit happening or what. Okay. And then right here.

Tight, warm. Does it have an age or a gender?

Oh, female and older.

Older? Okay. Older than you are now?

Yeah. I think. I don't know. I don't think of myself as 50s, but...

No, but is it like when you say older, like 80s or I feel like these witch hands.

It's really fucking weird. Whichy.

Yeah. Whichy. Okay, cool. Whichy. Anything else that you notice about it?

As I talk about it, it pulls back a little.

What do you know about it?

It's familiar.

Does it have any stories or or a visual that attached to it?

More like the first words of Cando Minor is, I don't like this. I don't want to be here.

Okay. That's the problem. The part that's coming in that's saying, I don't like this. I don't want to be there, is another part. It's a protector. Would that protector feel safe enough to go have some tea for a moment?

I'll send that protector outside the office.

Hang on. I want to thank that protector and just let that protector know that I've totally got you and I'm not going to take anxiety to anywhere that they don't need to go. Really high level right here. We're not going to go anywhere we shouldn't go today. Okay? I just want to thank that protector for coming in and just say, Have a tea, but thank you so much for speaking up. Thank you. So, with a little bit more permission, just to talk to this part, what is the part, the anxious part need?

The first thing that came up was a hug, reassurance that I don't have to do this on my own. Yeah.

Does that part of you know that you are here, that yourself, that you're resourced, undamaged self? Does it know that you're here?

I think so. I think the reason why I say it like that is because I think one of the things that I've been struggling with for so long because of workaholism and being busy and on the move as my go to protect her. As long as I'm on the move, I'm going to be okay. As long as I'm busy, I have had a deep feeling of loneliness.

Yeah.

Yeah. So the part- Yeah, being in a quiet place up here makes me feel really lonely.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you for saying that. How do you feel towards the part?

I feel sad towards her. Tired of feeling lonely. I get it. It's painful.

So she knows you're here, and you have some compassion for her. I don't want to put the words in your mouth.

Oh, sure.

Yeah. Okay, beautiful. If she She wasn't in such an extreme role of doing, doing, and anxious, anxious, what else would she be doing?

She'd be hanging out with her friends.

Hanging out with her friends? Okay.

She'd be doing fun shit. I don't know. Going for a hike.

Going for a hike. Okay. Would you be there, self? Yeah. Okay. In your own mind's eye, can you just take a moment to just visualize taking her by the hand or however it visualizes for you, however it comes to your vision. Taking her on that hike, see who is around, see whatever comes up. You can tell me whatever comes up, whatever you want to share.

I can totally see it. Totally. There's a black bear that is out with her cubs up there. And so I just see us walking down the path, and there's the black bear.

How does she feel with you on the hike?

Happy that I'm there.

Yeah. And is there anything that you want to say to her on this hike?

I'm not going anywhere.

Can you make a commitment to her right now that when you notice her, you can just take her by the hand and go on the hike and remind her that you're not going anywhere?

When you say notice her, are you talking about when that feeling comes back?

Is that what you mean? Yeah. When the anxiety starts to come in, can you just let her know?

I am not going to let you be there alone. Right.

And make a commitment maybe that you'll just take her on that hike. I'll just- Maybe even literally. Maybe even literally go for a hike with her.

Totally.

Beautiful. How does she feel now? Just to close it out, how does she feel?

I I think some of the protectors have come back in. Okay. That's okay.

They're welcome back. They're welcome back now because- They're like, I don't want to go to hike. That's okay. They're welcome back. I want to thank them for stepping aside for the time that they did. They did a beautiful job. They are welcome back. We can always ask them to step aside when there's some space, but right now it's okay. They can come back. You now have what you have right now, Mel, is direct access from self to the part. It's so beautiful to witness. You have direct access from your adult-resourced internal parent self to the part of you that's so protective and anxious. And you've given her a full media alert that you are available to her when she needs you.

How the hell do I change my mindset? How do I stop trying to find it outside of me? I don't even know how to begin to find it inside of me. In fact, you mentioned that you were depressed, and I was reading an article where you were interviewed and you said that you were writing in a journal during this period, and the first entry you wrote was, I don't remember being happy, and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. And now you're like the world's guru of happiness. So in that moment, though, Sean, you had an experience that I think everybody has at some point. I'm not happy, and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. And so what What's the first thing that you would want somebody to know if that's where you are right now?

I think the very first thing I'd want is actually the recognition, because I wish I had known that earlier, that whole thing we're talking about. I think you're right. I think we all have that moment where you realize, I thought I'd be happy when, and it didn't work. But then if you ask somebody why they're not happy, they'll tell you about one of their externals, right? I'm not happy right now because I don't have a boyfriend. I'm not happy right now because I've got this guy at work. I'm not happy right now because I don't have enough money. So I think the very first step might be acknowledging it, that the human brain is designed to foil any attempt that success will guarantee happiness. Because every time you hit one of those targets, we change what we think would create happiness. I think the best example of that is actually the pandemic, because I think at the beginning of it, in the middle of it, everyone thought, think how happy we're going to be when the pandemic wanes. And the pandemic is waning, and we don't have that guaranteed levels of happiness. And what we forgot was there wasn't 100% levels of happiness before the pandemic.

So I think the first is a recognition that this isn't working. From there, I think that it requires a mindset shift and a behavioral shift. In that article and in the work that I do, I research what we can do to create happiness when the world doesn't look like it should. And I think one important caveat to that is that while I'm talking about what we can do internally, that doesn't negate the need for external changes. We have systemic reasons while there's inequality, discrimination, racism that we should fight. Absolutely. I believe what gives us the power to fight that is the internal changes. And that everyone needs to do it, not just the people seeking happiness. The people who are being discriminatory need to do it, too.

So let's start with the mindset. What is one step, one simple step, that somebody who is sitting alone, like Sean, unhappy Sean, back In the mid-2010s writing, I don't remember being happy, and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. How the hell do you change your mindset? Because if you keep saying that to yourself, you're not going to be able to access happiness within.

Right. Well, I think there's something unique in that moment because I was attempting to do something about it because I'm trying to write in a journal to be happier. I'm just like, I don't think this is going to work, which we know from research, that's not That's not a great mentality. You can predict the course of treatment based on whether or not you believe the doctor can heal you. So that was not an auspicious place to start. Okay.

So, Sean, are you telling us that what you're about to tell us to do is going to work. And we should believe in our ability to change our mindset and to take actions and to access happiness.

Yes. I would actually, I would wholeheartedly say that. Not only because I've experienced myself, but then we've researched it ever since. I mean, what I've learned in this research is the depression was not the end of the story at all. And that even in the midst of a broken world, in fact, only in the midst of a broken world, Have we ever been able to create happiness? So the question is, how do we do so? I think the starting point is realizing not only that our strategy wasn't working, but acknowledging that there are multiple realities in this moment. And one of them is, I don't have boyfriend or girlfriend, or I don't have this money, or I don't have this job that I want, or I'm frustrated about whatever it is. I think when you acknowledge that that's true, you could say that's one reality, but there's also some other realities as well. Last week, I went to the hospital because I was having chest pain.

You were?

Yeah. I was in the ER. I missed my very first talk in two decades. And I realized in that moment, when they strip you of everything, and the doctor is going to knock door. When the doctor knocked on the door, I was like, This could change my life. It didn't. I was completely fine. But in that moment, my whole life changed. My whole life could have changed and was completely disrupted within those moments. I think when we realized that there There's multiple realities in that moment. One of them is, I miss to talk. I'm not with my family. I'm in a hospital I don't want to be in. That's true. On the other hand, I'm going home today. I'm going home to two kids that I love and a wife that I Those are equally true, but in the same reality. Because my brain has a limited amount of resources, I need to choose, and I need to choose what I'm going to be focusing my brain on. There is so much negative in this world that I could spend the entire rest of my life focusing upon that and upon my fear, but that that doesn't serve me at all.

It's not a valuable reality for me. That in the midst of these multiple and true realities, I'm going to look at the ones and focus on the ones that are going to allow me to fix the negative parts of my life. Or They're at least going to give me the optimism, the happiness, and joy to take the next step and the next step. In depression, I just needed a step forward. I felt like I just stopped moving. So I started doing these habits, and these are the habits that we know work. These are all the things you know about as well. Gratitude, for example. I think that this would be my answer to someone sitting there and to that 26-year-old boy who is feeling this was in those moments, I needed to scan. I need to stop scanning for all the deficits in my life, and I need to use some of those finite resources to scan the world for the things that I was grateful for. And it was hard because my brain kept being like, yes, but what about this? What about this thing you don't have? So I had to literally train my brain, and we train it exactly like we've seen anything else with the human body, is I had to keep doing it.

I can't build a bicep if I only lift a weight once, then I'm done. I had to do it every day, and I had to I created a pattern out of it, even when I wasn't sure it was going to work, and even when I could see no change in my life. I'd say, easily, for the first two weeks, I saw no change in my life. I'm just sitting there trying to- Well, I wanted- Oh, go ahead.

You, sorry.

I'm just sitting there writing down things I'm grateful for, and my life still feels terrible. I remember breathing hurt when I was depressed because everything hurt. Everything didn't seem like it was worthwhile.

What kept you kept going? I think one thing that's really important to say- What kept you going?

So that's the thing. I don't get to talk about this much in any of the interviews, so I'd love to talk about this, too, because I think you're going deeper than some of the surface questions we normally get. I think that the habits are what pulled me out of depression. I write my gratitudes. I journal. I do exercise. I write a two-minute kind note almost every day. I'd say 90 plus % days since my mid-20s. I know that when I don't do those things, it's like when I don't brush my teeth, I get this film in my mouth. That's what I feel like my world looks like when I don't do those habits. Those habits are the way the building blocks for creating happiness. But the turning point for me, which I never get to talk about, the turning point for me in all this was actually not me. My job was to make sure other people didn't get depressed. So I kept trying to be there for other people. I was just supposed to be this paragon of knowing what you're supposed to do in optimism. And I kept going deeper and deeper in depression because I knew that there is a dissonance between what I was feeling and what I was showing to the world.

The turning point for me, and what actually got me to try to do those habits, was at the bottom of the depression for me, I turned to my eight closest friends and family and told them that I was going through depression. A couple of these people were my competitors there at Harvard or my peers. I told them I was going through depression. I said, It's genetic. There's nothing you can do. My grandmother, grandparents, it's genetic. I just wanted to tell somebody. But immediately, the My groundswell of support was phenomenal. They kept calling me, they emailed me. They met up with me. One woman brought me cupcakes. It's not when I did it to get cupcakes. But as soon as I did that, everything changed. The reason for it was actually a study I found way later in my life. It was a study by these two researchers in Virginia, and they found that if you look at a hill, you need to climb in front of you. If you look at that hill by yourself, your brain shows you a picture of a hill that looks 20 to 30% steeper when you're alone, compared to that hill that you look at of the same height while standing next to someone who you're told is going to climb the hill with you.

So I said that in a convoluted way. When you're alone, hills actually look 20 to 30 % steeper to the visual cortex, which is amazing because I thought we have this objective view of the world. That's bad. This is good. This is how tall that mountain is. And what we realized was, it was one of those matrix moments where I realized that the world is not objective, it's subjective. And And that hill, those challenges are collapsing and expanding based upon whether or not you think you're radically alone going through this and trying to get out of this, or whether you're with other people. So as soon as I did that, as soon as I opened up to other people, that was the turning point, because it was the move from happiness as a self-help idea to this recognition that happiness was not an individual sport at all. And suddenly, that hill of overcoming depression in front of me dropped by 20 to 30 %. And they opened up about things they were dealing with. None of them was depression, but it was just challenges they were experiencing. And we started creating these meaningful narratives and social bonds that made me want to do the habits because there was something worth doing the habits for.

So it was a combination of habits and social connection and a mindset shift that allowed in that moment to break from this idea that nothing matters and that there's nothing that I can do that matters, and I have to just wait for the world to change.

Well, it makes perfect sense. And it reminds me of the fact that the surgeon general just had that op-ed piece that went viral yesterday about the epidemic of loneliness. And in his op-ed piece in the New York Times, he talked about his own struggle with it and how the turning point was him admitting, just like you did, to his family, friends, and to a few colleagues, that he was really struggling with this. And it was there checking in on him and them sharing back that they felt disconnected from social groups and from themselves as well after the last three years. That really was the turning point. But I love that you added that research because it is true. When you are down and sad and you feel like a sad sack that nobody wants to hang out with, that's the story you tell yourself. And that story then and the emotions that feel low make you keep isolating. And it's when you reach out that you change the behavior and you to change the narrative. And then that provides a little bit of that intrinsic lift that you need, that maybe there is something I can do.

Maybe there is hope. I want to go a little bit deeper on this because you've been there, and I've been there, and lots of people listening have been there and are there right now. And so when somebody like you come in or I'm sitting here on the mic, it's so easy to be resigned and push everybody away and be like, Well, that's great for you, Sean, but you don't know what I'm going through. And I think this question, Andrew, it's actually number three. It's Charmaine. Let's play Charmaine's question because I think it's going to help us even go a little bit deeper to provide some hope, Cian, for somebody who's really feeling like, I've tried everything.

Since my teen years, I've been asking myself, why am I here?

What's my purpose?

How do I create happiness within myself?

I've made so much progress, yet right now I feel lost. I feel like a failure.

I feel not good enough. I feel like I'm not a good girl.

I feel like I'm not a good enough mom to my daughters. I feel selfish, I feel off course, and like I'm not living up to my potential. I've done the work.

I know this is coming from my limiting beliefs, trauma projections that I have taken on as truth, yet Here I am, feeling lost, alone, and frankly stupid. I do understand the privilege I possess.

I practice gratitude. I know I am blessed, and I do a lot of things right. I don't think I'm depressed. I'm not completely unhappy. So what the fuck am I?

I'm in some goddamn vortex of nirvana and hell.

Sean, what pops out So many things.

First of all, how self-aware this person is, right? To be able, in the midst of this, to be able to identify the stages that they've been through, where they are currently, the recognition of the good, but also feeling like that they don't feel good enough and that there's more potential. What I kept hearing in my head over and over again is, this sounds like me. This sounds so human. I think we fluctuate all the time between this, I've got things going, and then, wow, I certainly don't. If I have a really productive Monday, I get everything done, and I'm super cleaning the house. Tuesday and Wednesday are terrible. I'm exhausted. I don't want to do anything. I feel like I waste every Tuesday and Wednesday whenever I have an amazing Monday. I think that that's because we swing, right? And I think what our hunger for is... If our hunger is for our mountaintop experience all the time, that we always know that we're loved, that we're always amazing, that we're always beautiful and the smartest person in the room. I think that that's an illusion, and a false desire, because I think it's an accurate reflection that we are not living up to our potential.

I think that that's true all the time. I think that I could be doing better as a dad. I could be doing better as a husband. I know that when I work really hard at being a great dad, I know I immediately look around at all the people that are doing amazing things at work, and I'm like, whoa, I'm so behind. Then when I do a ton of stuff for work or travel ever, then I'm like, oh, I should be a better dad. I swing back and forth between this. And I think what we need are those anchor points in the midst of it. And where those anchor points come from. You had me on the show to join you because I research this, but I also went to the divinity school before getting into this. So what motivated my beliefs in why positive psychology mattered came from this belief that the story we tell ourselves and the lens to which we view the world changes how we act in it, and where we find our meaning, and where we find that value. And I think that those narratives, those belief systems, can answer some of those questions about how can I feel loved even when I'm not achieving my highest or my potential.

I think in the world, that's very difficult because then we get on Instagram and we know exactly who's doing great, based upon likes, or based upon some quantification or money can tell you who's doing great and who's not. None of those None of those fill that void. So where those anchor points could come from? I think that they have to come from other people as well. There was a study that came out of Stanford that found that loneliness had nothing to do with actually the number of people within your life. Loneliness was It's simply the absence of meaning you felt in the relationships with other people and their meaningful impact upon you. That if you weren't doing anything meaningful for other people's lives, then you didn't feel social connection for the people that are around you all the time, and vice versa. So if that's the case, if meaning is what's driving our levels of happiness, then I think we actually... My grandmother said it. She's like, If you want to be a friend, If you want a friend, you have to be a friend. And I was like, Okay, that's overly simplistic.

Not really, actually.

That's not working out for me. I can't be the girlfriend. In that moment, I didn't understand. Now I get it. What we're finding is that when people are experiencing that fluctuation back and forth, I think we're searching for meaning, and people search it in different ways. Religion, and philosophy, and psychology. I I think that a lot of the things that we search for don't work out for us, which is why we get to the point where she's talking about where we feel this vortex of, I've got it, I don't have it. Got it, I don't have it. Because we're reaching on to things oftentimes, or illusory, while we're grabbing on to things that are true. My mentor, Talbind Shahar, said that you're never as great as you think you are, and you're never as bad as you think you are. What I loved about that is that meant that there was a middle path in the midst of it. That sometimes when I think I'm a great speaker, whatever it is, then I I get humbled very quickly by anything. Or if I think that I'm not doing great, then occasionally I'll get an email and it's like, Hey, this was really important to me.

That middle path was actually the one that I wanted to be in. It's this recognition and being okay with, I am not at my full potential, but that's okay. The reason that's okay is because I'm having a meaningful impact upon other people. That habit that I mentioned of writing a two-minute pause of email, praising or thanking someone else, I found that one to be probably the most helpful of any of the things I've research because you can take someone in a socially isolated state with high levels of introversion, and if every day they scan for one new person to write a two-minute pause of email to, they stop on day eight, unless we pay them $15. On day eight, that's when they realize fully that they're not a crazy extrovert with all these friends that they could write to. They're like, I wrote to everyone my favorites list in my mom twice. That's everyone. And then they scan, and they remember, who's that mentor who got me into this job? Or who's that high school teacher that seemed to have some answer to some of those questions that that person was just asking? Or what about my kid's first grade teacher who transformed my son's life, but I don't talk to them anymore because my kids are in second grade.

And you start to see all these people that are in our lives that we're not connecting with. And a two-minute email thanking them or praising them or saying, I've seen how you've been going through breast cancer, and it inspires me that you're able to find happiness in low health I struggled to find happiness when I seem to have higher health. That those moments, that just brief meaningful act using technology for two minutes, we found that if you do it for 21 days in a row, your social connection score rises up to the top 15% of people worldwide. That's including experts. What we found was that you were lighting up these nodes of meaningful connections on your mental map of social connection. That, I I think if you look at the philosophers, I think if you look at religion, I think if you look at psychology, they keep breaking down this idea that you can achieve happiness alone, that you could just figure out your thoughts enough, and then you did it. You could just maintain your happiness. That happiness and meaning only come from this interplay with the ecosystem with others around us.

I love that. Go ahead. If you're about to talk another study, go for it.

I just could tell one quick study. It's a beautiful one. It's not about humans. You probably heard this one. This was also in the New York Times as well. There was a study where they found all these fireflies. Fireflies everywhere light up individually and randomly in the dark, and that's how they attract a maid. Their success rate per night per bug is 3%, which I'm told is good. But these researchers found on opposite sides of the globe, these two species, one in Southeast Indonesia and one in the smoky mountains of Tennessee that you can take busses out to go see. These fireflies have these neurotransmitters that allow them to all light up and all go dark at the same time, which is beautiful, but not that smart because we live in a survival of the fittest world. We're told, be the fastest, smartest, brightest light shining, otherwise, you'll never be successful. At MIT, they studied these fireflies, and they realized, we just understand how systems work, that when they lit up together seemingly with their competition, the success rate doesn't drop. The success rate goes from 3% to 82% per bug. It's not like one bug does better.

The whole system was doing orders the magnitude better than we thought was possible because as they lit up together, their light became brighter, and it was attracting more and more potential mates than a single light would have been able to do and create these virtuous cycles. We kept seeing the same thing when we looked at humans. We found that the greatest predictor of long term levels of happiness, as you know, one of the greatest predictors is social connection. It's the breadth of the meaning in your social relationships. So it's not something you could figure out in your head, and then you did it, and then you can hold happiness forever. It's about finding a way of lighting up with other people and getting them to light up as well.

So, Sean, what I love about what you just said, especially in response to that question from Charmaine, is that I was listening to her just tick off one negative, nasty critical thought after another. I could feel like this heaviness. And then all of a sudden it occurred to me, wait a minute. I bet happiness is broken into two things. It is from the neck up, and it's the things that you tell yourself. But it is also, and probably way more important, that you think about the things that you're doing from the neck down. And that's where these habits come in, that if it's all doom and gloom from the neck up, you're not going to feel any motivation, hope, or interest in lighting up with everybody else. But if you can force yourself to start ticking off these simple habits that you recommend, that you practice, that you've researched, and you just highlighted the one of taking and making a two-minute note, just a two-minute note every single day for 21 days, it will have an impact in how you feel, which, of course, will start to shift all that shit you've been saying to yourself, which probably is stuff that you heard your parents say to themselves.

And so what I love about your research is that you're also making it actionable, because I think that's part of the problem, that when we feel shitty and we say shitty things to ourselves, we don't take the actions that actually change it.

Yeah. I heard one time I was on a plane, and the woman sitting, I don't know, Katie corner behind me and to the back, she said she was talking to somebody else loudly that she had just met about all these psychological understandings about herself. Like, literally a litany of all the psychological problems that she had. I realized, and she said she had been going to therapy for years. She had this incredible knowledge about herself and understanding where she was. At no point did she ever mention anything she was doing about it. She was talking to a stranger about it, which was more trauma-dumping than actually trying to move forward. But I think there's this moment where I really thought that if I read enough books, that I'd find happiness. I thought that if I I thought if I read enough books, I'd be smart, and then people would like me. That was completely not true. I think that we take these paths, and I love what you're saying there, is that there's this interplay between the beliefs and the actions that we do. You see the same thing with religion, between this faith and works.

It's the things you believe, but if you say you believe those, but you're not doing any of those, I'm not sure you actually believe these things. That there's got to be a connection between those. What I would say is, in addition to that, is don't try to do it alone. I think that we treat happiness like self-help. I know our books are in self-help sections sometimes, right? But as soon as we do this on our own, without that friend, without that mentor, without those people that we're doing meaningful acts for, then we get frustrated very quickly and think we're doing something wrong. And what's wrong is actually the formula. Like, happiness never works out if it's an individual pursuit. And that's one of those other mindset shifts I think was crucial to find that there wasn't... You can't do enough yoga to force yourself into happiness unless that yoga caused you to be more peaceful with that interaction with your mother-in-law.

That's like happiness applied. 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.