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 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 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 You know what? I hate this exercise. 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 you show up is a key to your happiness now. In fact, seeing those 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 in 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 end 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.

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 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. I mean, 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 street. I mean, 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 talking, walk and talk and walk and talk and talk and talk and 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 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. 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 creative and that helped people. Kind of 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 I got 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 You were little and the family had a dog, maybe it's time that you actually lean into getting one. 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 was 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 want to know what you discover, and here's how you can share it with us.

Take a Take a photo of yourself, for real, and tag the Mel Robbins podcast. I'm going to start to repost your photos and tag you so that we can share these clues, so that we can all benefit from the magic that you bring back from the other world into your life, and maybe it'll make us happier, too. I love this because here's what you're going to find. You can do it, too, with your own life. That you have the power to go from where you are in this moment into that fantasy world in your mind and bring what you learn back into this present moment to help you. All righty. You got that one clue? That one clue that you're going to tuck under your arm and bring right back into your life today? Good. Now go do it. What if there was a whole other world that you could tap into? Only in this world, you would be happier. 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?