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

As I go, God, you look like hell, I start then cataloging all of the things that are wrong with my appearance. I'm like, your gray hair is coming in, you've got stripes on your neck, one of your One of your tubes is lower than the other, you look exhausted. Then as soon as you have a negative thought or a self-criticism, it's like lint in a dryer. Once you start collecting it, it just keeps on collecting it. Now I'm thinking not about how horrible I look or how tired I look. Now I start thinking about all the stuff I need to do. I start going, Oh, my gosh, I got up a little too late, and I've got a Zoom call in 8:00. I don't even have a bra on yet. The dog needs to be walked. I could feel my energy going down. I just I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. Overwhelmed, uncertain. It doesn't even matter what was going on in my life at that time because I think it's a universal feeling to feel overwhelmed by your life at times. Here I am, a motivational speaker.Unmotivated.Unmotivated, uncaffenated, no brawn, standing there in my underarrière with my dog at my feet.

I don't know what came over me, but as cheesy as it sounds, I just raised my hand and gave the tired, haggard woman in the mirror a high five. It didn't change my life right then and there, but something shifted. I felt a little lighter. I felt like it wasn't alone. I It felt like, Okay, this moment in your life is hard, but you can do this, Mel. And I went on with my day. The second day, I woke up, and this is when things started to really churn in my mind. The first thing that I noticed was this. I wake up, Louis, and I make my bed, and I realized I was looking forward to that moment in the mirror where I was going to see myself. Now look, I'm 52 years old. I will probably have a hot during the middle of this interview at some point. I'm a lot older than you. Just don't eat lobster. Oh, yeah. I had a really allergic reaction the last time we were together. Wow. But I have spent the first 45 years of my life either criticizing the woman in the mirror or ignoring her.

This was the first time that I could remember that I was actually looking forward to seeing myself. When I was coming here today, you and I are very good friends. As I was walking in the building, I'm feeling excited to see you. It wasn't like I was feeling excited to see myself. I'm not like, Yeah, because I got a lot of crap going on in my life, but I felt a little bit like I'm about to see a friend. That second morning, I high five myself again. Again, I feel something shift. I feel just a little lightness in the mood, and I go on with my day. The third morning, I do it again. Again, lightness. I keep doing it, keep doing it. A couple of weeks go by, and now I'm starting to feel a little bit of momentum, and I'm really enjoying it. I have no idea what the hell is going on. I haven't even done this in front of my husband, Chris, yet because let's be honest, standing in front of a mirror. High-fiving yourself. Yeah, come on, how pathetic does it get? Like, it's really, is your life that bad?

I snap a photo of myself. I've got my retainer in, I got bedhead. I'm not looking glamorous. I did not expect this be the photo that would ignite a movement. Within an hour, I posted on my story on Instagram, within an hour, at least 100 people tag me. All over the world, people high-fiving the mirror with their kids, people on a submarine, high-fiving it in the military, people MMA. I thought, Okay, wait a minute. Maybe I'm not the only one that needs a little boost in the morning. Maybe I'm not the only one who feels alone. Maybe I'm not the only one that is missing a sense of encouragement and control and confidence in an overwhelming moment in my life. Maybe there's something here. Then the messages started to come in. Whoa, Mel. I have been using this for five days. This woman wrote to us, Lewis, She's had body dysmorphia for 20 years, has not been able to look at herself in the mirror. Five days of doing this high five, and she said, I can look at myself and I even see beyond the body, I see the person, and I can grin.

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

What's the science say?

Okay, so the science. Let's start with the first thing. The first thing is that when you first try it, you will not be able to raise your hand and high five yourself and be like, You suck, Mel, or, Today's going to be terrible. There's a reason for that. The reason is that for your entire life, you have given other people high fives. When you give a high five or you receive one, what is a high five? Just the gesture alone. What communicate if we do this to each other and we high five?

Nice job. Good work. You're doing amazing. Keep it up.

Yeah. I believe in you. I love you. Let's go. If you blow a shot and you got to get back in the game, a high five is like, shake it off, you can win. All of that lifetime of high fiving other people, and the messaging associated with it is programmed right here in your subconscious brain. There's a field of study called neurobics, which is about-Neurobex? I didn't make that It's interesting. Physical movement plus new neurological activity. When you marry an unexpected physical movement with new neurological activity, it's the fastest way to forge new neural pathways in your brain. We know the example, you've covered this on your show, of brushing with the wrong hand and thinking positive thoughts. The reason why that works is because when you're brushing with the wrong hand, it's unexpected, your brain doesn't expect it. Instead of drifting off about the fact that you need to walk the dog, you have to focus so your prefrontal cortex is engaged. You're not used to high-fiving your own reflection. So it's an unexpected physical movement that then activates all of the positive programming in your subconscious. So when you raise your hand and you high five, your tired self, Louis, what happens is all of the messaging with this, the high five, I believe in you.

I love you. I celebrate you. You got this. Keep Come on. It actually fuses with your freaking reflection. It's impossible to criticize yourself. Your brain won't allow it because it's not wired that way when you're making that motion.

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

No, you can't.

You can't. This lifetime of positive subconscious programming associated with high-fiving other people gets fused with your own reflection in this ritual. That's just the beginning. That's just the beginning. The second thing is that starts to happen that's really interesting. We've had a ton of people do this, obviously, around the world. Super easy idea. It's spreading around the world. We start interviewing people about what's going on, and this is what we notice. We notice that One of two things happened when you first try this. Here's how I want everybody to try it. You're going to go into the bathroom and do it before or after you brush your teeth. That's important because I want you to make this a ritual that's part of your morning routine. We need to to stack it with something you already do. You're going to stand there for a minute and I want you to look at yourself. Now, that, right alone, most of us don't do. Look at yourself. I want you to just think about the day ahead. This is based on more research. Recent studies show from the University of Florida, that if you take just a minute and you set an intention about how the day is going to go, about who you're going to be, how you're going to show up, what's the one thing that matters to you to really make progress on, if you just set Set that intention, who am I going to be today?

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

Yes.

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

From yourself or from others?

Period.

Why do we think we're not worthy of celebration?

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

What? I can't say it on TV, but I can say it on the internet. I'm a piece of shit. I'm worthless. No one will ever love me. I screwed up my life. I'm a failure. I'll never amount to anything. It's too I'm a bad person. I think people actually say this to themselves.

Yeah, and they say it over and over again.Yes. Daily?yes.

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

If I don't have that car, I don't get the high five. If I didn't get that promotion, I didn't deserve it. If I am not in a loving relationship, I don't deserve to be celebrated because I'm not actually achieving or doing the things that warrant that. I'm here to tell you, I'm on a mission to make every human being realize that if you wake up in the morning and you're breathing, and you're standing in front of that mirror, and you have survived the stuff you have survived, and you are still waking up and trying to do better, you not only deserve a high five, you need it. Because what we also know based on the research is that empowerment, support, kindness, love, celebration. It is the single most motivating force on the planet. Tough love is a bunch of baloney. What really fuels people, particularly when you're going through a challenge, is feeling celebrated, seen, and supported, and the research bears it out.

Yeah, I can think of the times when I was on sports teams where I had great, loving, encouraging coaches. It made me want to work harder from a more energized place, an abundant energy. But when I had the coaches that would just degrade you and put you down and call your names in front of your teammates and make you feel bad, it would drive me to try to be better, but it was always harder. And I never felt satisfied I never felt fulfilled. I always felt like even when I accomplish something, it still wasn't good enough. And then I repeat that pattern Okay, I'm going to accomplish, but it's not enough to feel loved. And so let me keep accomplishing in order to feel loved, but I still don't love myself because it's not good enough. Yeah. Let me go for the next thing. Yeah, exactly. It's funny because I have a photo on my phone that my therapist told me to do this exercise eight months ago, which was a strategy for me to reclaim the love for myself. So I have a photo of my childhood self. I don't know if people can see this on YouTube.

Look how cute you are. But a photo of me. This is probably when I was five or six, maybe I was seven. But something that I've tried to do really been integrating my life is to reconnect with the child where I felt like I stopped loving myself.

Okay, so let's talk about this right now. You ready? Let me talk about this image. So let's talk about the Lewis this age, standing in front of a mirror. Yeah.

What I do is I stand in front of myself as a child. I imagine myself, but to do it, imagine looking at the mirror as yourself. Yes.

Yeah. Well, what I'm trying to say is when you were this age and you stood in front of the mirror, you had a totally different You had a very different relationship with yourself because you still loved yourself. You still thought that you were a great kid, and you wanted all the things that the adult, Louis, wants. You want to feel loved. You want to feel seen. You want to feel heard. You want to feel like you matter. You, in seeing yourself when you were this age, felt those things for yourself. Yeah, absolutely.

Somewhere along the way, you lost it.

Correct. What I'm trying to say is that when you stand in front of this mirror, exactly what Louis is talking about, when you've got coaches that scream at you and degrade you. Sure, it makes you run faster, but it leaves its mark. It does. It leaves its mark. There's research. Let me talk about why this is so motivating, particularly because so many of your audience love sports. They did a study where they looked at NBA teams, and what they wanted to take a look at was, does fist bumps, backpack, some high fives make a difference in a team winning?Touch.Touch, right?

Didn't they do a 2020 special or something?

I don't know, but if they did, I need to watch it. But so like the power of touch. But I think it's deeper. It's the power of encouragement. And so what they found is that in the study, at least in the years that they looked at, you could take a look at the teams that made it to the championships in the NBA, go all the way back to the preseason, and those were the teams that had the most number of fist bumps and backpats and high fives. And the same was true about the teams that were the lowest in the league at the end of the season. They had the least amount of fist bumps, high fives, and touch.

Why?they're least encouraging.Correct..

Those sorts of gestures build trust and partnership. I'm telling you, when you stand in front of a mirror and ignore yourself, you're like the losing NBA team. Interesting. Selfish on your own, isolated. You're not in partnership with the person you're staring at in the mirror. You don't have your own back because you're ignoring yourself. Yes. There's another study, and this one is, I think, even more powerful. They did this study where they wanted to know what's the most motivating thing to help somebody get through a really big challenge. The researchers divide kids into three groups, right? They gave each of the groups of kids very challenging problems to work through. They wanted to measure, okay, how resilient, how long would they work, what were their attitudes like? Then they measured it based on, well, what form of praise or support are we going to give each one of these groups, and let's see what's the most empowering. First group gets what we know to be the fixed mindset stuff. The praise was all verbal praise, and it was simply about a trait. Louis, you are so smart. Louis, you are a super student praising something that is just a compliment about you.

The second group of students working on a challenging problem got praise based on work ethics, so something in their control. Oh, Louis, you're working so hard. Louis, you You got such good perseverance. Louis, you're really just grinding away over there. Good job. Those guys did better than Louis, you're smart. Louis, hardworking, better. The third group, the researcher simply walked up, did not say a word, and high-fived the kid.

Really?

That's it. That's it. That group, literally, exponentially, more motivated, worked longer, worked through more challenging problems. Now, here's the big question, why? Why would a simple high five with no verbal praise be more empowering and motivating and inspiring and develop more resilience and confidence and motivation inside somebody? The reason why is this. A high five affirms your deepest fundamental needs. It's not just a gesture. When you high five somebody, particularly somebody who has either blown the free throw shot or is working on something difficult or going a really hard time, when you high five them, you're saying, I see you. When you high five them during a challenge, you actually are acknowledging, I know this is hard. So the person feels heard. Because it's one to one, and you have to be really intentional. If you and I go to high five, we have to focus on it. That was a good one. That was good. If you miss it, what do you do? You got to do it again. Correct. There's an intentionality behind it, and that makes you feel like you're being affirmed as a unique individual.

Interesting.

And so all of those things are in that one gesture. Now, it goes even more. So there's even more here. So I was talking to our buddy, Dr. Daniel Amen, right? One of the world's leading experts on brains. He's got like 60,000 brain scans.

I think it's like 120,000.Oh.

Isn't it in this one?

That's some crazy, yeah.

So he was so excited about the high five habit. He completely geeked out. He's like, Oh, my gosh. Yes, yes, yes. He's like, Yes, aerobics. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So we then... He said, Let me tell you what else is going on, Mel. And I'm like, Really? There's more? He said, Yeah. He said, You know how when you do it, you said you felt like a little boost in your mood. He said, Well, there are two things going on there. He said, First of all, when you cross a finish line in a race, what do you do?Put.

Your hands up.Yeah..

What do you do in your favorite team sports? You high five someone. Yeah, you high five somebody. What do you do at a musical concert? You, Yay. What do you do? You're raising your hand in celebration when you high five somebody or fist bump them or put your arm around them. That raised arm gesture in a positive sense triggers your nervous system to tingle with celebration. It's the energy of celebration, even if you're going through something difficult. Even more, you get a dopamine drip when you do this. Part of the reason why you feel this shift in your mood and you feel a little bit of like, Oh, okay, I can face this. I can do this. I got this. Is because of the dopamine, it's because of the nervous system, and it's because of all of this positive programming associated with that gesture. Isn't that crazy? That's powerful.

That's powerful. What does someone do, though, if they just constantly have the negative self-taught on their mind that they're no good? Do they go in front of the mirror every 10 minutes and do this? Or is there another strategy behind the negative self-taught?

Well, okay. So first things first. Definitely make this high five in the mirror a habit, okay? So start practicing it. Give it 5 to 10 days and start to see what happens. The second thing that you can do with negative self-taught, okay, is you need to start to interrupt it. So the thing about negative self-taught is that it is typically something you've engaged in since you were yay high. In addition to it being wired into your brain, it is also something that can get triggered by your nervous system in stressful situations. The first step, and we can talk more about the filter in your brain and how the filter in your brain is causing you to stay stuck in a lot of this negative self-taught and how to use your mind to help you. But the first step is you got to do the awful part of getting self-aware of what the voice is saying. The way that you do that, there's a couple of techniques that you can use to create what researchers or psychologists call You want to separate yourself from the voice. You can do what Louis is doing. He's writing down right now in a journal.

You can keep just a little notebook with you, and you can catalog when your attitude tanks and what are you actually saying to yourself.So.

Should we write down all the things we're saying negative about ourselves? You can.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. That's it. Something simple. Yeah, you can believe that, right? You can believe, I'm not meaning to screw up. I'm I'm doing the best I can. That, I believe. That's better than, boy.

I'm the best in the world right now.

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

This is why the high five works, by the way, because it is an action. You are acting like somebody who believes in and loves themselves. That's why it works.

Moving to motion. Don't just think only, but move and act.

When you see yourself, we always talk about positive morning routines. Let's talk about negative ones, okay? Because your negative patterns are the reason why you have horrible self-taught. When I was in law school, I hated my life. My anxiety was out of control. I was out of control. I hated law school. And so my behavior actually reflected my state of mind. I I would wake up hungover. I would immediately think, Oh, my God, I'm late. I would then reach for a cigarette and light it. Then I would run around the apartment getting dressed and trying to find everything because nothing was organized. I would then quickly drive to Dunkin' Donuts, even though I had no time, to stop for coffee. I'd get a big old coffee with four sugars and two creams, smoking another cigarette on the way, speeding my whole way there. Then I would sit in class, be panic-stricken about being called on. Same thing again. Then I would sit at lunch, pick it a salad, gossip friends, avoid the homework. Then I would go to the library, procrastinate forever. Then I would drive home, split a bottle of wine with my roommate, fall asleep, wake up, repeat.

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

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

Yeah, how are you going to believe that other people are going to do that for you as well? If you can't do it for yourself, why would other people do that?

Well, actually, this is why people's relationships don't work out. Because you're looking outside your sofa the things you actually need.For validation.Correct. You are chasing people and seeking validation in romantic relationships. That will end when you can stand in front of that mirror and validate yourself. When you build yourself up, when you support yourself, you show up totally differently for everybody else. When you know that you can have your own back, you're not going to be looking for the validation from your boss or your friends or all these other things. People have problems with boundaries because they can't look themselves in the eye. So how the hell are they going to look somebody else in the eye and say, actually, this doesn't work for me?

What I'm to tell you is the single most powerful thing I have ever discovered in my entire life. And my passion about this topic is not coming from the fact that I want you to buy the book. Don't buy the book. You don't need to. I put all the content out for free anyway. My passion comes from the fact that I know that this habit will crack you open in a way that you need. And And it will reintroduce you to the most important force on the planet, and that is belief and support and validation of yourself. Life is what turned you into a cynic. You were not born that way. And so what I'm here to tell you, and I'm standing not only on my own experience, but on the experience now of hundreds of thousands of people and validation of the world's leading scientists. I know that this sounds dumb. I know that this is cheesy. And I am telling you, if you take this on, just do it five days in a row, something profound is going to happen. What you're going to realize at the deepest level is there is a fucking human being that stands in that mirror with you every single morning, and you have been criticizing and ignoring them.

And the moment that you wake up and you realize realized that every single morning, there's a human being that looks at you that needs you, that wants you to pay attention, that needs your support and love. And you have abandoned them, you've criticized them, you've beaten them down. And the second that you change your relationship with the person that stares back at you in the mirror, your whole life changes because your relationship with yourself is the foundation of everything. And so let me tell you, though, the story of how I discovered this, because when I start to unpack the layers and layers and layers of what is happening, this is foundational. It's foundational to your experience, to your fulfillment, to your happiness, to your confidence, to all of it. And so I'm here to tell you, if cynicism works for you, keep doing it. Don't even try this. Stop listening to us right now. But if you want something more, if you long to feel happier, if you wish you were content, if you wish you could stop focusing on the things that are going wrong, if If you wish you could forgive your sofa stuff the way that you can forgive everybody else, if you wish you weren't so bloody hard on yourself, you better sit up and pay attention to what I'm about to tell you because this shit is real.

So it was April of 2020. I woke up. You don't even need to know the backstory. And I just felt overwhelmed by my life. I felt defeated. I felt like the list of stuff that was on my shoulders between the business I was running, the employees that I I have, the people I take care of, the kids that my husband and I have that were in breakdown, just everything was weighing on me. And I know we all know that feeling. You wake up, stare at the ceiling, you feel like the fear and the overwhelm is a gravity blanket pinning you to the bed. I use the five-second rule, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I get out of bed. I always make my bed. That morning, I made it so I wouldn't crawl back into it. I then start dragging myself to the bathroom. I'm standing in the bathroom in my underwear, brushing my teeth like every other morning. And all of a sudden, you guys, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, and I think, Oh, my God. You look like hell. And the woman I saw standing in the mirror did.

She looked exhausted. She looked tired. She looked stressed. I actually felt sad for her. And then out of habit, I I started picking her apart. The dark circles under her eyes, the saggy neck, one boob is hanging lower than the other. And then, of course, once you start picking yourself apart, your thoughts only go more negative. So then I start thinking about the day ahead, and it wasn't optimistic. It was like, why did I get up so late? And I got eight minutes before the Zoom call starts, and, shit, there's a dog, and he's... I haven't even walked the dog yet. I did not respond to those text messages. So now I'm doing the beat down. And here's the interesting thing. If either one of you guys had walked into the bathroom that morning, I would have spun on a dime. I would have been like, Damian, Jake. Oh, come on, guys. Yes, this sucks. Yeah, this is hard right now. Yeah, you don't deserve this. But you know what? If anybody can figure it out, you can. Come on, you got this. Get your ass back out there. Suck it up. I would have been able to lift you up.

But standing there alone in my bathroom and my underwear, I actually couldn't think I have anything to say. And honestly, I don't think I would have believed it because it's not how I felt. And I don't know what came over me because look, I'm a cynical person. I'm not like all Who, like a lot of people are. I like science, but this sounds so dumb. I literally don't know what came over me. But standing there in my underwear, I didn't even have a bra on, for God's sakes. I literally raised my hand and I high-fived the woman in the mirror because she needed it. And look, it's not like lightning struck. The heavens didn't part, and there weren't like, angel. That's not what happened. I literally just felt like something small shift inside me. That's it. I just felt like a little... My shoulders dropped, my chin lift. I actually laughed because it's so dumb. I mean, come on, that's pathetic. I'm standing there, I got to high five myself. Jeez, Louise, who does that? And I laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. And then I don't even say it. I feel this sense of, Suck it up.

Come on, it's not that. There's people with a light, just get out there. And I go on with my day. That is what happened. It was the second morning, you guys, that it really hit me. So let me tell you what happened on the second morning, because this is crazy. So I wake I'm like, I'm going to have the same problems, same overwhelm, same anxiety, same beat down. I, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, get out of bed. I make the bed. I start walking toward the bathroom, and that's the moment, I felt something I have never felt before. You know when you are about to meet a friend and you're about to walk into a pub or a cafe and you're going to have a beer or you're going to have a coffee with somebody you really like. What do you feel in that moment when you're about to walk into the pub? Excitement.

You feel great. Yeah. Did you have that feeling?

I did. I actually felt excited to see- About what? To see the human being Mel Robbins.

What were you saying to yourself, Mel, when you put your When you put your hand on the glass?

You don't have to say anything. And I felt it before I even got to the bathroom. And this is the part that had me really wake up. I am going to be 53 years old this year. I don't ever remember experiencing the feeling of being excited to see the human being Mel Robbins in a mirror. I've been excited to see an outfit. I've been excited to see what a haircut looks like. But the human being? Never.

Mel, I've never even looked at the human being in the mirror. Correct. I've looked at the haircut, and I've looked at the outfit like you, and I've looked at the bags, and do I need to shave this morning? I'm 42. I've never looked at the human being in the mirror. Never. When you think about it, who does? It's a means to end looking in the mirror, right? Brushing your teeth. Are they clean? Great. Move on with the rest of Correct. But Mel, will you tell us about this? Because I'm not being cynical, but I want to address the cynic that would still go, Yeah, this is great, but it's not for me.

You talk really quite powerfully in your book about neurobiotics, which to me is the fascinating area that this links to. The way I understood it was that we learn faster when we do an unusual activity and we link it up with a positive thought. It goes in deeper. But would you I'll explain in a bit more detail why this exercise you're describing can be so profoundly positive. Yeah. So let me unpack this for you, and I will hit you between the eyes with the research, because at this point in the story, I'm not even in the bathroom yet. I'm realizing as I'm rounding the corner to step in the bathroom that I've spent probably 45 years either criticizing or ignoring myself. You talk a lot about morning routines and everything we need to do to set yourself up for making sure that you're high performance person and you're happier. You stepped over the habit that everybody has, which is as you're standing there brushing your teeth, you drift into autopilot and you either beat the shit out of yourself or you ignore yourself. And then you start thinking about your day and everything that you're going to do for everybody else.

And I'm here to tell you there is a habit you you need every morning based on crazy science that works for you because your brain and your nervous system is already programmed to have it work. And so I'm going to unpack this because it's important for you to understand where the cynicism comes from because it's fucking sad. It's really sad. And so standing there that second morning, I'm having this weird ass experience where I'm like, what? There's me standing here, and then there's this human being in the mirror that I've never actually paid attention to. Behind the skin, behind the face, there is a soul, there is a person, there are emotions, and I have never actually even considered it. You want to go out in the world and do great things. You want to be a leader? There is something called emotional contagion. How you feel about yourself, the emotions you feel in the morning, they are contagious to the people you're trying to lead and inspire and change. And so it starts with you, especially if you think you're going to be some leader. This is not cheeseball. This is science. And so as I stand there and I realize there is a human being I've ignored.

There is a person who needs me that I have neglected. And I put the toothbrush down. And it's important for you, as you said, Jake, you need to do this right after you brush your teeth because I want you to stack the habit with something you already do. You got to clean the crap out of your mouth. You don't want to go into the day and spread dragon breath all over the place. You got to clean the crap out of your brain so you don't spread that negative bullshit that's in your head that's been building for your entire lifetime on unsuspecting people around you and for yourself. And so I put the toothbrush down. And here's what you're going to notice. So first things first. This will feel weird. It will. And the reason is explained by neuroscience. You have the opposite habit of high-fiving yourself. You either ignore or you criticize yourself or you judge yourself. That's what you do in the mirror every day. The high five is the exact opposite. So just like I write with my right-hand right now, it's not weird at all because it's already programmed into my subconscious brain through neuropathway connection and through a lifetime of physical and mental activity fused together.

If I lost my arm in a car accident today and I had to start riding with my left hand, of course it would feel weird. It's new. It's the opposite of what I've done. That's what it feels like to create new neural pathways. So weirdness is not a rejection of the idea. It's your own brain and how it works. That's number one. Number two, there are only two reactions that people have when they first do it. It's either wildly positive, so you might raise your hand and high five the mirror, and you will either burst into laughter at the absurdity and how good it feels, or you'll start crying in a positive way because there's a deep emotional release for people when they realize, I have been waiting for a very long time for you to wake the fuck up and actually see me and start supporting me. And the tears come from a sense of relief that you finally got it. You're finally returning home. You're finally coming back to who you fundamentally are. Because as a kid, you didn't lay in front of a mirror and criticize your face or your chubby thighs.

You literally crawled up to it and kissed yourself. You used to spin in front of it. You used to dance when the music came on. Life taught you to criticize and ignore yourself. So this is a coming back to what is innately wired into your DNA, this need for support and celebration of self. And so it feels so good. And I'm going to explain the science behind that, because there's so much science here that we've even uncovered since finishing the book. It's bananas. So the second, though, and more likely response is the resistance. You will scoff at it. You will not do it. You'll roll your eyes. You'll tell yourself this is stupid. Let me tell you where the resistance comes from, because this is what's blocking you from being a high performer. It's blocking you from feeling fulfillment. It's blocking you from the happiness and joy you deserve. When you stand in the bathroom every morning, you drag your entire past into the bathroom with you. So if you've ever been abused used or experienced trauma or been discriminated against or been abandoned or heartbroken or have had anything done to you that makes you feel like you're unworthy or unlovable or somehow you're damaged, That experience in your past is the evidence that you use to see a human being that is unworthy or unlovable or damaged because of those things.

And so you see somebody who doesn't deserve celebration because of those things. Or if you're a human being, you have done shit you regret, whether it's cheating or it's drugs or it's lying or it's not living up to your potential or it's giving up on yourself or it's hurting other people or all the things that, boy, you would forgive Damian or Jake, or Mel Robbins for, but you can't forgive your sofa it. You wear that shame and that regret like a yoke around your neck, and then you bring it into the bathroom every morning, and you see that evidence. My husband did this for years. He followed dream and went into the pizza restaurant. And they worked, he and his best friend, for seven years at it, and then it shut down. It didn't return the investment that they had hoped and they had worked their tails off for. And when he left that business in 2014, you guys, he could not separate the failure of the business from how he saw himself. My husband, despite having the name Christopher Robbins, Winnie the Poe, he would walk into that mirror for six years and see a failure.

Did he feel like he deserved a high five? No, because he had evidence for why, and that's the resistance. There's another reason why, and this is big with high performers. It's because you believe that it's only when you're achieving something that's worthy of celebration that you deserve it. That until you have the money in the bank, until you have the number on the scale, until you're married to the right person or living in the right neighborhood or driving that Range Rover or whatever the fuck it is that you think that you need or your hair is not kinky or this, that or the other thing. That until you have that thing, you haven't done anything worthy of a high five So why would you, on a random day, raise your hand in celebration, given the fact that you're not where you think you should be? That's what the resistance is. That's what your cynicism is. And it's become a habit. And here's the That's the saddest part about all this. If you think about the London Marathon, even you cynical Brits, do you stand on the side with your arms crossed at Mile 8 and go, Hey, you fucking asshole.

I'm not cheering for you. I saw how slow you were on the last split. When you cross the finish line, I'll give you a little polite clap. Fuck off. That's not what you do. You high five them. In fact, if you've ever done a road race, it's the encouragement Encouragement of strangers every step of the way.

Because we're British and we're brilliant at encouraging other people. We're absolutely horrendous at encouraging ourselves.

Everybody is. I'm like one of the most positive people that you will ever meet. And I did not know how to stand before myself until I discovered this and actually see the human being Mel Robin, somebody who is trying, somebody somebody who needs help, somebody who doesn't ask for help, somebody who's waiting for somebody to show up and acknowledge me and help me and read my mind. And the fact is, you have your best ally and Hype Squad, the person you spend your whole life with staring back at you in the mirror, and you need to actually be that person celebrating and high-fiving them every step of the way. And here's the science. Here's the science. This is why I want you to do it for five days. So first of all, yes, it's going to feel weird. Yes, you're going to resist it. But the moment you raise your hand and go to high five yourself, you'll notice something. You can't high five yourself in the mirror and go, I hate my face. You can't do it. And your brain won't allow you to. And there's a reason why that can be explained by science.

And this has to do with neurobex, what you were talking about, Damian. So I spent a couple of hours with Dr. Daniel Amen. So the world's leading expert around the brain. When I told him about this three weeks ago, the guy geeked the hell out and explained to me all kinds of stuff that I didn't even realize. So he said, first of all, and this part we write about in the book based on neurobex, marrying a physical motion that's unexpected. So you never high five yourself, so it's unexpected. So that snaps your prefrontal cortex into motion. Like, what the heck is going on? With a positive new thought, it's the fastest way to create a new neural pathway. And so he basically said, so you guys, when you've high five people in sport or in life, or you've received one. What does the gesture of a high five without anybody saying anything, what does it actually communicate to you?

I see you. I acknowledge you. Human connection.

Yeah. I believe in you. I got you. Let's do this. I celebrate you. If your attitude's in the tank, shake it off. I got you. It's all of that. It's celebration. It's encouragement. It's acknowledgement. And you've been doing it for other people your entire life. So all the positive programming is already in your basal ganglia. It's already married to the motion. So when you raise your hand and you do the physical gesture, your brain recognizes it, you guys, and it overrides any critic, any habit loop associated with bashing yourself, silences it, and it overrides it with the positive programming and marries it with your reflection. Do you realize I've been doing this for a year, and I don't even have to high five myself anymore? Because when I walk in front of the mirror, the critic is gone. Wow. Gone. I see a human being who's trying. I see a human being that I love, and I just feel that way about it. And it's not arrogance at all. It's just support. That's it. And so I'm not even done with the science. Hold on a second. So Dr. Daniel Amen was like, Hey, Amal, you want to know what else?

You want to know what else? You want to know why it feels goofy and you feel a little bit better when you do it? I'm like, Yeah, I do. Tell me, Dr. Amen. He said, Well, because every time that somebody else high fives you, your brain gives you dopamine, the feel good drug. When you do it to yourself, your brain recognizes the gesture and gives you a drip of dopamine, the feel good drug. He said, You want to know why else it works? I said, Yeah, I do. He said, Well, because your nervous system also knows what's going on, and it jumps into the mode to help you. And I'm like, What do you mean? He said, Well, gestures of hugging, you're raising your arms. Pat on the back, you raise your arm. A wave, hello, you raise your arm. When you cross your finish line, you raise your arms. When you high five somebody, you raise your arm. All celebratory gestures, all gestures your nervous system recognizes as celebratory. You start to do it every single day in the mirror, along with the positive programming that's already in your brain associated with it, along with the celebratory energy that is in your nervous system that boosts your mood.

Your body and your brain is already conditioned, wired by a lifetime of experience to have this override your circuitry and program a new set of neural pathways and an entirely new experience that you will feel when you see and think about yourself. It's crazy.

It's amazing.

So Mill, we get a lot of teachers and parents listening to this podcast. And I was particularly taken by the line that you said about that many of us haven't been taught the skill of being kind to ourselves, which is what the book is around. So what advice would you give to those of us that are parents or those of us that are teachers about how we can start to educate children around kindness? Well, the most powerful way to teach anybody anything is to not tell them, but to show them. It starts with you. If you stand in front of the mirror and criticize yourself, your kids are hearing you. If you say, Let me get in the back of the photo because you don't like your body, your kids are hearing you. If you screw up and you're like, bloody hell, why do I always suck? Your kids are hearing you. Their brains are like little sponges absorbing your patterns of behavior. And if your patterns of behavior include being hard on yourself, criticizing losing yourself, hating your body, your kids hear it. And so it starts with you. That's number one. The second thing that I would say is that there's a really interesting study that we write about in chapter two that was mind-blowing to me, that every educator and where it needs to know.

Now, you guys talk about the growth mindset all the time, right? You know the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. We all know that. So researchers wondered, what is the best way to motivate somebody to tap into that sense of resilience when you're facing a challenging moment, right? And so they did this study where they divided kids into three groups, and they tested three different forms of encouragement. One of them was based in the fixed mindset stuff. So they would walk up to students and verbally tell them you're really smart, praising a fixed trait about them, which helps a little bit to feel encouraged, but doesn't really go the distance. The second group got the growth mindset praise, which is, of course, as we all know, praising something that you have a control goal of, which is your effort. Oh, you're really perseverant. Oh, you're such a hard worker. I really admire that. The third group, the researchers didn't say a thing. They just gave the kids a high five. That's it. Just a simple ordinary high five. No verbal praise at all. Those kids that got a high five during a challenging task, those kids outworked both of those groups, felt better about themselves, worked longer, pushed through more challenges.

The researchers were so blown that they changed the title of the study when it was published in Frontiers of Psychology, the research magazine, to the Motivational Power of a High Five. And the question is, why? Why is it more motivating than verbal praise? Well, the reason why a high five is so motivating is because it fulfills a human beings most foundational emotional needs. When you high high five somebody, whether it's yourself or your kid, when they're going through a challenging moment, first of all, you hear them because the high five says, I get it. This sucks. Like, when my husband started doing this, he still felt like a failure. The high five doesn't say, You're awesome. The high five says, I get it. There have been some things that have really gone wrong. And guess what? I'm still here for you. I still believe in you. That's what it's doing. So when you high five a kid going through a challenge, you're acknowledging that this is hard, but you're also transferring the energy of your belief back to them. It's a shared celebration in your ability to face this moment. And I'm here to tell you, you can build that partnership with yourself.

Like right now, at the beginning of a school year, what goes viral? All of those moments where teachers create individual handshakes and high fives with kids going into the classroom. Why do we all love that? Well, because Because innately, we know that each one of those kids feels seen and feels important. They don't feel ignored. They don't feel like there's no reason for them to be there. They feel like they matter. That is the most important thing for your kids and for you to feel that they matter. And so I think that, A, you should certainly be adopting the high five, and B, you should be modeling this. Because one of the other things that I write about in this book, and since you brought up kids, I'm going I'm going to read a text message from one of my daughters who is 21 years old, and she is a junior in college, and she is at a music conservatory studying She's a singer-songwriter. She's at a music conservatory at the University of Southern California. And she texted me the other day, and I think our text exchange is illustrative of not only the power of this, but of the resistance that everybody feels.

So she says, Hey, Mom, are you getting excited about your new book? I can't wait to read it. By the way, I've been high-fiving myself in the mirror. Just to show you this is real.

I can't.

Oh, it's not focusing. But this is what I'm reading from. And I said, How's the high five working? And she said, Well, I really don't know what to say when I do it, because sometimes I still stand and look in the mirror, and the first thing I think is, you're not as pretty as the rest of the girls. And I said, well, you actually don't need to say anything. The high five will silence that thought and communicate everything that you need for you. And she said, But what if I didn't accomplish anything? Like, I didn't work out today or I didn't write a song like I said I would. Do I I'll high five myself after the shower. I said, Absolutely. You got to keep showing up every day trying to do a little better. That alone makes you worthy of support and celebration. You see, we have the secret to life and happiness and motivation backwards. You think you need to accomplish something to be worthy of a high five? And she says, Wait a minute. Are you saying the fact that I exist deserves a high five? It just makes me And I said, yeah, when you high five your sofa just standing there in front of the mirror, you are demonstrating that you see you and all your potential, and you still support you and you believe in you, and that no matter what happens today?

You've got your own back. And I said, well, what do you think about what I just wrote, Ken? And she said, I love it. It makes me feel great. And then I wrote this, Can you explain why it makes you feel great? Because maybe what you say is going to help me me explain this to everybody else. And she said, Well, what the high five shows you is that you don't actually know how much you're always doing. And I think that once you start high fiving yourself every single morning, it almost allows you to be more present to everything you're doing. And it helps you recognize all those small victories. And when you compile those small victories, you can actually recognize all of your accomplishments, big and small, and eventually come to believe believe that not only are you worth it, but you can do anything.

Oh, man. That's moving. And by the way, thanks very much for sharing the personal message between you and your daughter. So interesting. I'm interested in the way it makes you reframe your thinking, though, isn't it? Because I've been sitting here thinking about high fives and when I high five people in my life and I high five my kids exactly as you've just said, when something great happens. And then I thought about what you said about the MBA at the very beginning. When do they high five each other? At the start of the game. They haven't even won the game. But the first thing they're doing before they even tip off is high fiving each other. And I think there's a really strong message there for people to share that high five as your kids walk out the door in the morning, as your husband or wife wake up. And it also leads me to ask the question, my kids, I know I spend all my time lifting up my kids because they're my children. I want them to be resilient, but I think it's probably been a long time since I high five my wife.

And I think there's a probably it's worth us all thinking, isn't it? About, of course, it's good to be good to ourselves and good to the people that we feel need it. But we should also high five those that we think don't necessarily need it because perhaps they do.

I think that's true, but it does start with you. Like, what I've begun to realize is that unless you truly love and support yourself, you won't allow allows somebody to deeply love you back or support you either. And so I feel that the more I have done this and the more I have felt supported and happy with who I am by accepting myself, by loving myself, every single morning, supporting myself and sending myself into the game of life. Just like those NBA players, sending myself into the game of life today. Knowing that I have my own back. And then sending Chris into his day and sending the kids into the day. But at the end of the day, there's something else I write about. It's in chapter two. Or Chapter 4, rather. So as I was writing this book, I only started writing this book. Oh, my gosh.

Would have been May of 2020.

I published the five second rule five years ago. I've been trying to write another book. I did not sit down and go, I need another five. I need another five. I got to write a book about a five. I'm dyslexic. Writing is very difficult for me. I've been struggling to figure out what to write about. And I think oftentimes ideas have a soul and a spirit and a timeline of their own, and they're not ready to come until they're ready to be born. And I think this idea of this high five habit. Yes. Yeah, I can tell that story. But hold on. I got to tell you this because no apology necessary. I just want to follow up on what you were saying. Because, yes, we need to support our spouses and our partners and our kids and our colleagues, and everybody needs to feel a sense of being lifted up. But the true, true power comes from knowing how to do it for yourself, because it's in those moments when you're alone, that how you see yourself and And how you treat yourself matters. I get this text, and this is at the beginning of Chapter 4 that would break anybody's heart.

And we all have gotten a text like this from somebody we love. How do I not feel like the ugliest girl at the bar every time I go out? Now, it doesn't matter, Jake, how I see her. It doesn't matter if I high five her or I tell her that she's beautiful and smart and loyal and amazing human being. Because her experience of her life is not determined what I think of her. It's determined by what she thinks of herself. And so the other reason why this high five habit is so important is because a mantra is not going to work. If you hate your body, or you think you're the ugliest, or you think you're a failure because your entrepreneurial venture failed, standing in front of a mirror and chanting, I'm awesome, It's not going to work because your brain doesn't believe it. You've been saying the opposite for decades. The power of the high five is you can still think I'm ugly and I'm a failure. But the second you go to raise the hand, you're demonstrating the opposite. And so it's really important that this is something that people take on for themselves because only you can change how you see yourself.

And it's only through action and acting like a different person that your brain will fall into line and start to see you as a different person.

And if you're too scared to do it because you have such a low opinion of yourself, you don't really want to get to know the person in the mirror? What about those people?

Do it anyway. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Do it anyway. You desperately want to. You have been withholding it from yourself.

And on the total opposite, the people listening to this now thinking that's great. Well done, Mel. Amazing. There are people out there that need it, but I don't. I'm confident enough. I'm happy enough. Life's good enough.

What would you say to those- Great. Don't do it. Don't do it. I'm not here to say that- It's not beneficial to everyone regardless of their own opinion. Of course it is. So even if they're great, they should try anyway. Even somebody who thinks they're great is bullshitting themselves. Because at the end of the day, there are things you've never forgiven your sofa. There are pieces of you that you pick apart. There are parts of you that you hide and that you've shoved away and that you've never faced. And there's a level of contentment. There's a level of freedom that comes from truly accepting all of you. Everything that you're not, everything that you are. There's a level A feel of happiness and joy that comes from truly being able to stand with yourself and understand that all those things that you did that you'd rather forget, you just did them while you were trying to survive. And it's time to fucking forgive yourself. It's time to move on. So many of us that are high achievers, by the way, are trying to prove through our actions that we're actually worthy. And all of the bolstering and the nice cars that we drive and the fat bank account.

Look, I'm one of the most successful successful people you'll meet. I make a shitload of money. I am making a huge impact in the world, and all of that shit is outside of me. It created a life, guys, where I'm just busier and busier and busier because the second you get the Range Rover, what's the next car that's going to prove it? The second that you get a million dollars, how are you going to get $10 million in the bank? The second that you're not racing around and you're not busy and the book's not on the best seller list, that just means that you're no longer worthy. And so when you marry your worth or your lovability with what you are achieving or how you're performing or the shit that you have, you will always be trapped in this rat race of trying to get more. You'll also be consumed by jealousy in comparison, because the second that somebody outranks you or does something more or does something that looks better, you will, at your core, feel like you're no longer lovable. That's what is at the heart of comparison.

Are you still doing all those things that left you in that difficult state when you started high-fiving yourself in the mirror?

Yeah.

Does this change the way you act and help you?

You know what it does? It's a great question. So it is profoundly, fundamentally a total 180 in terms of the experience of being with myself. I actually don't even see a body. I don't criticize myself. I see somebody that I cheer for, full stop. Just like your children, You would never... It doesn't matter how much weight they lose or gain, or it doesn't matter if they get fired from their... You might be disappointed. You never stop loving them, and you never stop cheering for them. It's that relationship that you create with yourself. I don't ever have a thought that is a teardown of my kid. Do they frustrate me? Yes. Do they make me angry? Yes. Do they disappoint me and annoy me? Yes. Do they piss me off? Yes. Do I ever stop loving them, supporting them, celebrating, cheering for them? Never. Never. I now have that relationship with myself. And does jealousy come up? You better believe it does. Do I find myself people? Do I want you two to like me? Yes, I do. Am I going to lie to make that happen? No. I'm going to catch myself. Am I going to...

All of those feelings come up. All of that. Throughout the day, it's impossible to go through your day and not have a negative thought and not have something happen that takes you down and not have something happen that has you aim it back at yourself. The difference is I so have my own back that I'm like, There I am. I'm jealous of these guys again. You know what? You guys have already launched a membership program. Fuck off. I'm jealous. You're ahead of me. I'm comparing myself. And I catch myself because you can feel what it feels like to go low energy. And I go, there I go again. I'm just doing in that thing. And then I flip it back into a high five attitude, which when it comes to jealousy and comparison, I go, Oh, interesting. There it is again. I actually want to have a membership program like these guys do. Pay attention to it. Stop blocking that desire and get to work, Mel.

And the high five habit is no different. Okay, so I find myself last year at a very low moment. I am standing in my bathroom. It's a moment I know every woman can relate to.

They're in my I'm in the underwear, I'm looking in the mirror, and of course, I am picking myself apart.

I'm like, I hate how I'm getting really jowly right here. And I don't like how I've got these big lines that are starting. And then I notice I've got this indent right here that I don't like, and I don't like these marks right here that go this way on my neck.

I've covered them up with foundation. It's like, I'm on what are you talking about?

And this boob hangs lower than the other boob. And I'm just picking myself apart because that's what I've been doing for the past four decades. That's what almost all women, and even men, do it, too. This is what I'm finding based on the research of the book. And then as soon as my mind is negative about my appearance, my mind goes negative about my day. Oh, God, I forgot to text Lisa back.

I need to finish up that report.

Oh, my gosh, my first Zoom meeting is a night.

Oh, the dog needs to be walked. And now I'm going down the road negative about the day. The whole His vibe is... And I don't know what came over me, but I just literally had nothing to say to myself.

I really felt overwhelmed, just an average low moment, and I found myself, as pathetic as it sounds, raising my hand and high-fiving my own reflection in the mirror, brawless in my underwear. It felt good. I put my shoulders back. I I felt a little bit like, Okay, I got this. And I went on with my day.

The next day, there I am again, and my mind is going negative. And I'm like, No, high five.

And that's what the high five habit is. But this is just the beginning. The high five habit book is full of a bazillion tools. But I want to unpack this one because there's so much science here. And for women in particular, this is unbelievable in how it changes you and your relationship with yourself. So first, let's start with a high five. Think about when in your life you have either given or received high fives, what does a high five from someone else or a high five that you're giving to somebody else communicate? You're on the same team.

You're in it together. Yeah.

And it's also like I think about it, you give it to somebody before a big play. We got this. You give it to somebody when their attitude's going down. Come Keep going, pick your attitude up, you give it to somebody in celebration. And so a high five communicates support and empowerment and partnership and trust and celebration. And it's so powerful and we're so good at giving all of those things to other people, like you and everybody, especially women.

We cheer for our friends.

We create birthday parties. We buy people presents. We do work for our colleagues when they're overwhelmed. We help our parents out with whatever. We're so We are good at cheering for our favorite musicians and buying people's stuff. We are horrendous at giving that same support and celebration to ourselves. In fact, we not only don't give ourselves support and celebration, we do the opposite.

We tear ourselves down, and we beat ourselves up, and we pick ourselves apart.

And every single woman I know is constantly saying, How the fuck do I put myself first?

How do I do?

How do I love myself? I I know I'm supposed to.

Well, I'll tell you how you do it. You put yourself first by doing for yourself what you've been doing for everybody else, because that's how everybody else became first in your life.

You need to start to cheer for, support, and validate yourself, period. I realize now that I'm high-fiving myself, that I have spent the first 40 years of my life either criticizing my reflection or ignoring it.

How sad is it? It's incredibly heartbreaking and yet extremely familiar to me, and I think a lot of women. Yeah. And believe it or not, a lot of men.

There's a lot of men that don't want to look themselves in the eye in a mirror and be with themselves because they're so focused on the things that they haven't achieved or the things that they failed at. And so they're ignoring themselves.

They're not being with themselves.

And so first things first, when you take a moment in the morning to just stand in front of the mirror and be with yourself, and then you raise your hand in a gesture that you have always associated with celebration, support, belief, and empowerment with other people, there's a number of things that happen that can be proven by research. First things first. This is research out of Harvard.

It's recent.

They've shown in studies that Simply taking a minute in the morning to get intentional about who you're going to be today and how you're going to show up changes your productivity, it changes your level of confidence, it changes how impactful you are as a leader at work and in life. So this moment in the mirror is not to be diminished. This is a moment for you to be able to take a moment and intentionally align yourself with who you're going to be. Second piece of research is from I'm in a field of study called Neurobex. It basically means when you marry a physical action with something, a thought that's unexpected, you accelerate the development of new neuropathways. And there's famous studies that have proven that if you brush with your non-dominant hand while you're thinking something, it sticks in your mind because you have to focus. Well, the same is true when you raise your hand and high five your own reflection. You see, you've been doing this for your entire lifetime. So there's already subconscious programming here, Lisa. The second that you raise your hand like this, it is so programmed in your mind to associate belief, cheering, empowerment, celebration, with the high five itself, that it's impossible to go, God, I hate my neck.

Boy, is that cellulite ugly?

You can't do it because this part of the mind immediately takes over and does all the positive stuff with a high five.

It's crazy. Try it tomorrow morning. You will not be able to criticize yourself. Now, there's another piece of research around this, which is when you do a high five, we did one, the first one we did, right? We didn't quite hit each other in the right good smack. So what did we do? We did it. Correct. Because a good high five requires you to be present and intentional. Isn't that cool? Yeah. All of that in a little high five. And so what I What I started to notice was that I was in real-time shifting my relationship to myself. Instead of criticizing the woman I saw in the mirror or ignoring her, I was developing a partnership, a trust, a sense of self-validation.

A, I have my own back. I see you, Mel Robbins.

We're going to have a great day today. We got this. No matter what it is that life is going to throw at us, you got this. That's how it all started. Then, of I put it on my story after a couple of weeks of doing it, and people around the world started to post pictures of themselves doing it, and then all of their stories started rolling in about the difference that it was making. There was one woman that said that she's been struggling with body dysmorphia for 20 years, cannot look in the mirror, and after five days of doing this, can stare at herself in the eyes with a grin.

Five days. Five days.

And the reason why is because of the lifetime association that you have with doing this for other people. So when you try this tomorrow, here's what I want you to do.

Stand in front of your bathroom mirror and take a moment and just be with your sofa a second.

And then if there's resistance to raising your hand and high-fiving your own reflection, what is that resistance? 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.

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