Try It For 1 Day: 4 Small Choices That Make a Surprisingly Huge Difference

(00:58):

Today, you and I are going to talk about four simple choices. I'm talking the smallest micro moments that make a surprisingly huge difference every single day in your life. And here's why I wanted to talk about this topic. So our executive producer is this phenomenal human being named Tracy. She is one of the smartest people I know. We have been friends for nine years. That's how long we've worked together. Now, she came into work the other day and she admitted to me that the other day she had all these big plans. And instead of just rolling out of bed and jumping into her day, she spent an hour in bed in her pajamas reading the news on her phone and it ruined her day. So it got me thinking, are there other critical tipping points in your day that either set you up to win or make you feel like you're losing?

 

(01:53):

Are there other tiny little forks in the road that happen in every day that you live, these little micro moments that have a major impact on you and you don't even realize it, they're right in front of you? So I dug in and I pulled apart the day and I have found, yeah. In fact, there are four of them, four of these micro choices that you and I are faced with every single day. They are so subtle, yet the impact is so major because once I walk you through these four moments, holy cow, you're going to see how easy it is to feel better in your life starting today. And I love these so much because I think right now life can kind of feel like you're being yanked around as if you're holding a rope tied to a runaway horse. And it's incredible. It's incredible when you notice that you do have a choice and that when you choose on purpose, when you make a better choice, that you feel more in control.

 

(03:02):

So let's jump in and just unpack choice number one.

(03:51):

Oh my gosh, you got the sleep in your eyes. Is it Monday? Is it Tuesday? Is it a workday? Before you even sit up, you reach for something. And I'm no psychic, but I know what you reach for. You reach for your phone. You've got the phone by your bed or worse. The phone is already in bed with you. And so that's the first thing you reach for. And what do you tell yourself? You tell yourself the same thing. I used to say, well, I'm just going to check this for a minute. I got to check on my kids. I'm just going to check this thing real quick. And then you open up your favorite app and then you start scrolling and by then it's too late. It's an avalanche, a headline about something horrifying and then another and then another and then a video you didn't ask to see and then a comment section full of people screaming at one another and then a meme that's trying to make a tragedy funny.

 

(04:37):

And it's never funny. And somebody's hot take and somebody's rage post and somebody's conspiracy nonsense. And within 30 seconds, whether you know it or not, that micro choice made your nervous system. Just light right up. And I want to say this upfront. I applaud you for wanting to be informed about the world. That matters. But listen to me. You do not need to be informed in your pajamas. I have a rule about the news personally. I never read the news in my pajamas unless it is a Sunday and I've already made breakfast and had a cup of coffee and I have made a decision to lounge around in my pajamas and it's after 11:00 AM. If I want to choose to spend an hour reading the headlines then in my pajamas, you're allowed Mel. But never do I read the news in my pajamas first thing in the morning.

 

(05:29):

See, reading the news for 15 minutes or an hour every day isn't the problem. It's the micro choice to reach for the phone and do it in bed. Before you've done anything else, mainlining it like it's your coffee or your vodka, the first thing you reach for? I mean, that's a death sentence for your brain because the moment you reach for your phone, here's what your brain reaches for. More. More headlines, more drama, more fear, more outrage. This is why it's hard for you to get out of bed because you're now hiding from the world that you're mainlining because you've reached for your phone. More information that you can't do anything with at six o'clock in the morning while you're curled up under your comforter, more, more, more, more, more, and it's never satisfied. Just like that first thing in the morning, you have lost control of your day.

 

(06:14):

That's why I call these micro choices, these tipping points in your day. It's like you opened up the front door of your house and invited the world into your bedroom to shout things at you. You should have gotten into the shower 10 minutes ago and now you don't have time to take one. And oh, you didn't have time to walk the dog who's been staring at you patiently from the foot of the bed. And had you just gotten out of bed when you're supposed to get out of bed, you would've had time for breakfast. We'll forget that now. And this is the common sense explanation for how a micro choice can have major consequences.

(07:05):

His name is Dr. Alok Kinojia. Now, he's known to millions of fans online as Dr. K and the Healthy Gamer. But Dr. K is a Harvard trained psychiatrist who teaches people exactly how to protect their motivation and focus in a world designed to steal it. Now, when he appeared on this podcast, Dr. K helped me understand something really important that I now want you to understand. He was one of the 57 experts, by the way, that I interviewed and I feature his work in the Let Them Theory. And what you're about to hear, because I wanted you to hear from him about how this micro choice, what do you reach for first thing? Has such a massive impact on your mental fuel. See, he's going to explain to you that when you wake up in the morning, you have a certain amount of mental fuel available to you that you need in order to motivate yourself.

 

(07:59):

You need it in order to get through your day. That fuel Dr. K is going to explain is called dopamine. It's part of your body's motivation and reward system that helps you do hard things. And it also helps you feel good when you follow through. That's why it's called the motivation reward system. Makes you do hard things, helps you feel good when you do them. Now, here's what I never realized until I sat down with Dr. K. If first thing in the morning, when your brain is full of all that amazing, juicy mental fuel that helps you do all the hard things and be motivated all day, if first thing, you make this micro choice to reach for something dumb and easy and cheap, like your phone, you are using up the fuel you need to get through the day on something stupid and you're not even out of bed.

 

(08:50):

So here is the clip from our conversation on the podcast where he explains all of it. Check this out.

 

Dr. Alok Kinojia (08:57):

What a lot of people don't realize Is that you have a certain capacity for pleasure and behavioral reinforcement when you wake up in the morning. So our dopaminergic circuitry in the brain in this part called the nucleus accumbens. Basically, this is what gives us a sense of pleasure and also reinforces our behavior. So the problem with dopamine is we wake up in the morning and our dopaminergic stores are full. So what happens is we have a reserve of dopamine. So the way that this works is like, I want y'all to think about this. Let's say I wake up first thing in the morning and then I work for four hours. And then what is the subjective reward that I feel after four hours of work? It's really positive. Yeah. Then if I use technology for four hours, it's kind of whatever. But if I use technology for the first four hours of the day and then I try to go and do work- You're not going to.

 

(09:50):

You're not going to. And even if you finish the same amount of work, you will not experience the same level of pleasure because your dopamine has literally been depleted. Got it. So the way that I kind of describe this is imagine that you have a lemon that is full of juice. Yep. So at the very beginning, when it's full of juice, a small squeeze gets you a lot of juice, but by the end, you have to squeeze a lot to get very little juice. This is how dopamine is in our brain.

 

Mel Robbins (10:13):

So in other words, if you tap into technology and it invades your circuitry and your brain, it literally is like squeezing most of the juice out of the lemon first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning. And then that means that it's also going to impact your ability to do the work or to focus or to feel joy and all those things that normally if you did those things first, you'd feel a sense of reward and joy for.

 

Dr. Alok Kinojia (10:39):

Yes. So technology is like a hard squeeze. So if we use it first thing in the morning, we squeeze the lemon really hard and we get all the juice out, and then you have nothing left to feel good about because all of your dopamine stores have been depleted.

 

Mel Robbins (10:53):

I just love him. Don't you love Dr. K? And now I'm thinking about lemons, and that's a good thing because it's a great visual that I want you to take away from our conversation. As you reach for your phone, I want you to imagine and almost feel that you're squeezing your brain. As you pull the phone close to you, I want you to feel the lemon squeeze and tons of juice coming out as you start to go headline, headline. Social media. "Oh, I don't need to buy that, but I'm buying it. Oh, what is this person doing? I'm looking at the comments and I'm checking the locations and now I'm weeding work emails and juice draining from your brain." That's why this micro choice has such a major, major consequence. And I hope once you hear Dr. K put it that way, it will make sense to you that this micro choice, what do you reach for matters a lot because Dr. K is telling you if your first micro choice is reaching for your phone, you just started the morning with a hard squeeze.

 

(12:00):

Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, dumping, dumping, dumping, dopamine, go. It's gone for the day. And that one micro choice is why. The rest of the day feels like as much as you try, as much as you're trying to ring out of yourself and squeeze out of your day and force yourself to focus and as much caffeine as you can possibly drink and as much as you're doing your best, you just can't pull the motivation. That's why you're flat. That's why you're irritable. That damn micro choice first thing in the morning and what you reach for and the fact that it was a hard squeeze on your dopamine. And once you realize, holy cow, that it's that first micro choice of reaching for the phone and reading, oh my God, that's draining the dopamine, you won't reach for it anymore because you'll realize it is a choice and you can make a different choice.

 

(12:57):

When I'm at home, I'm really good about what am I reaching for? But if a couple weeks ago I was staying somewhere else and I had my phone right next to the bed because that's where the charger was and the bathroom was down the hall and I didn't want to put the phone in the bathroom and then have it go off and wake up the kids that were sleeping on the same hallway. So guess what happened? I reached for it. And then guess what I did? I started scrolling on Instagram. And I'm almost embarrassed to tell you this, but you want to know what I did next? Can you guess? I bought a sweatsuit that I did not need. I mean, it was really cute on the model. It was like just plain, kind of that gray sweatsuit color, cropped hoodie, long pants, pockets. Okay, click.

 

(13:39):

One-stop shopping. Here we go. I'm not even out of bed yet. Have you ever noticed that the things that you buy in bed you never ever need? That miracle water bottle that's somehow going to change your hydration and your whole life, the countertop gadget that only makes mini waffles. You don't even eat waffles. The posture corrector that makes you look like a folding chair. And you know why all this matters? Because what you reach for doesn't just steal your dopamine or your focus or your time or your energy or your peace of mind. It seals your money. And if you don't choose to reach for your phone, what could you reach for? I mean, just stop and think about that. You've got this micro choice that has a major, major impact, positive or negative. If you don't reach for your phone, what could you reach for?

 

(14:29):

Oh my God, it's limitless. You can reach for your partner for a moment of connection. Simple, good morning. You could reach for your pet. I mean, they've been standing there at the bed waiting for you. You could get up and reach for the curtains and let the light in. You could reach for your coat and step outside even if you're in your pajamas. You could reach for a glass of water. You could reach for your gym bag, your tennis shoes. You know what I reached for this morning? My ski poles. My ski poles. In fact, at 6:30 in the morning, this is what I was doing.

 

(15:04):

That's me. With my skis on and you put these things called skins underneath them that are basically like Velcro, and then my husband and I hiked up the mountain, the local ski mountain, got an hour hike in with our skis, and then you peel the Velcro skins off the bottoms, you stomp back into your skis and then boom, you ski down and you get to do it before the lift's even open. We've had a bunch of other experts come on and talk about dopamine and they say if you can reach for something that is kind of difficult, maybe for you, that's meditation. Maybe that's taking a walk. Maybe it's climbing a mountain like I did. Maybe it's just getting to the gym. I mean, that's the hardest part of the workout is actually getting to the gym. When you use that first squeeze to do something that's kind of hard, what's amazing is the fact that you use that dopamine to motivate you to do something hard first thing in the morning, that actually makes you feel better all day long.

 

(16:04):

The science is incredible. So choice number one, what do you reach for? If you change nothing else, please change that choice because that one micro choice, that one tiny moment makes a surprisingly huge difference. It sets you up to have a good day, a day you deserve to have. And that brings me to micro choice number two, good day or bad day. What are you going to have?

(16:55):

I'm going to have a terrible day. I think I'm going to screw up my life. Everything's going to go wrong." We don't consciously do that, but subconsciously, you're making a choice to believe it's going to be a bad day, to brace for a bad day, and you don't even realize that you're doing it. And that's why you can get into a rut in your life where you just have a string of bad days or weeks or months, and you don't even understand why. So let's talk about how this happens, okay? And I'm going to unpack the typical morning and how this micro choice of choosing to believe that it's going to be a bad day snowballs. And once I explain this from a common sense standpoint, I'm going to bring in some incredible research from a Stanford neuroscientist who studies the impact of mindset on your biology, your physiology on basically every aspect of your life is going to blow your mind.

 

(17:53):

So let's start though with just the typical morning. You don't realize you're making a choice to have a bad day because you just wake up, you've reached for your phone because until this moment you didn't understand that that was a micro choice that is creating major problems, but you did it. It's okay. But now you're feeling it because you've mainlined the news or you've looked at a hundred reels in bed, you're scrolling your life away on the phone, and then you finally look up and, oh my God, wait, it's already eight o'clock micro choice, major consequence. Now here's where the day goes off the rails. Not because you're late, but because of what you choose to start telling yourself. Oh my God, things are going to be terrible because I'm late. You jump out of bed and the first thought is, "I'm behind. I wasted so much time.

 

(18:40):

Oh my God, that's so bad." And then you start beating yourself up. Now you're not just late, you're pissed off at yourself. Then you see the dog just sitting there waiting for some attention and you get hit with that stab of guilt and the thought is, "Oh my God, I am the worst dog owner in the world. This dog deserves so much better than this. " And now every thought is bad, bad, bad, bad. And just like that, you have convinced your brain, you're going to have a bad day. And now your brain, oh, it's like, okay, we're having a bad day. All right, I know what to do. Let me look for signs that things are going to be a bad day. On the way to work, you hit traffic. And the thought is, oh, of course. Of course there's traffic and now you're gripping the wheel like you're in a fight.

 

(19:15):

Then someone in the office says, "Hey, do you have a second?" Body tightens. Your brain goes, "No, no, no, I do not have a second. I'm drowning. I can't do this. Oh my God. Now you're mad at me. " And you finally say, "Sure." But inside you're dying. That's the thing about this micro choice. Bad. It's going to be a bad day. I'm bad for not getting it together. This micro choice isn't just one thought. It becomes another, another, another, and creates a filter. A filter through which you see everything and everything feels harder. You drop something, oh, there's proof it's a bad day. You didn't get that thing done. Oh, there's proof. You're bad employee. Someone looks at you wrong or doesn't respond to something that you said in a meeting, "Oh, there's proof. You're bad. You're stupid. Why'd you say that? Your kid needs something for school that you forgot to buy.

 

(20:11):

There's proof. Bad parent. I'm the one parent who can't get it together. And your brain is now stacking evidence. Every tiny, small thing, more evidence. See, I knew it. I can't win. I'm never going to figure this out. " Oh my God, that's a lot, isn't it? It becomes a setting in your brain. But here's the good news because I'm about to bring in some incredible science. If it's a setting in your minds, because after all, mindset is just settings in your mind. If you can set your mind to it's going to be a bad day and you're aware of the power of a micro choice, then doesn't it stand to reason that you could change the settings in your mind with a different micro choice, a good micro choice that snowballs in a positive way, that builds evidence that you're capable, that you're going to make it through the day, that you got good energy, you got good intentions.

 

(21:21):

And so I want to introduce you to somebody extraordinary. Her name is Dr. Alia Crum. She's a professor at Stanford University and she runs the Stanford Mind and Body Lab. This is what they've established in her lab with scientific proof that you can learn how to use the power of your mind to be successful, to be healthier, to have a better attitude, to be in a different mood, to have more optimism and resilience. And when she appeared on our podcast, I asked her, "Dr. Crump, do mindsets really matter?" And in this clip that you're about to hear, she's going to challenge you. You're going to hear her ask you some questions. "Does how you think about your job change how you feel about your job? Does how you think about your health change your health? How can you really use the power of your mind to help you create a better life or to change the way your day feels?

 

(22:14):

"So I want you to take a listen to Dr. Crum. This is an excerpt from her appearance here on the Mel Robbins Podcast.

 

Dr. Alia Crum (22:21):

The work that we do in our lab is looking at mindsets about things related to our health.

 

Mel Robbins (22:26):

Oh.

 

Dr. Alia Crum (22:27):

So take stress. Do you believe that stress is going to kill you or is it going to make you stronger? What's your belief about healthy food? Do you believe healthy foods are the disgusting and depriving option or do you believe healthy foods are actually indulgent and delicious? What about cancer? Do you believe that cancer is an unmitigated catastrophe or might cancer be manageable? Might it even be an opportunity to make positive changes in your lives? So these mindsets, Mel, they're not true or false. They're not right or wrong. They're oversimplified, highly evaluative judgments about the nature of these things,

 

(23:13):

But they matter in shaping our lives. In fact, they create our realities and they create our realities not through some kind of magic, but by design. So our mindsets change what we pay attention to. If you believe the world is dangerous, you're going to see more danger in the world. Our mindsets change how we feel and expect to feel emotionally. Our mindsets change what we are motivated to do and how we actually engage and behave in the world. And what our work has shown is that our mindsets also change our bodies. They change how our bodies physiologically prepare and respond to different things.

 

Mel Robbins (23:58):

I just find Dr. Crum's work to be so fascinating. And I have the transcript right in front of me and I want to make sure that I repeat this accurately because I want to pull in what she just said to what we're talking about with this second micro choice. Is it going to be a good day or is it going to be a bad day? And does your mindset and belief about what kind of day it's going to be, does it actually matter? And what Dr. Crum's work proves, she just said it to us, is that our mindsets change how we feel and expect to feel emotionally. Our mindsets change what we are motivated to do and how we actually engage and behave in the world. And this is where it gets really interesting. The micro choice of having a good day versus the micro choice of saying it's going to be a bad day changes how your body physiologically prepares and responds to the rest of the day by design.

 

(25:04):

So what does that mean? It means these aren't just words. These are settings, settings that make a huge difference. And when you even just subconsciously start to embrace and go, "Today's going to be a bad day," simply by making that micro choice. Dr. Crum's research has proven that it can change how your body physically prepares for the day itself. And what's really cool about bringing Dr. Crum into this is that she's established this with research, pioneering research in her lab, but I'm also going to appeal to you as your friend and say, "I think you know this is true based on common sense. And so now that I see it and I'm aware of it, let me make a different choice. And here's the choice I want you to make. Today is going to be a good day because I'm going to make something good happen." Yep, there's a lot of stressful things going on.

 

(25:59):

Yep, my boss is kind of a dick and was in a bad mood. Yep, I got a big job. Yep. There's always something out of my control, but today is going to be a good day. How do I know? Because I'm going to bring a good attitude. I'm going to have good energy. I'm going to have good boundaries, so I'm not going to let the stupid stuff drain me. Today is going to be a good day because I'm going to make something good happen. Do you see how different that feels? And let me be clear. When you intentionally choose in this micro moment, you choose good. That doesn't mean you're delusional. It doesn't mean you're pretending that life isn't hard or the news isn't terrifying or that your inbox is in a dumpster fire. Choosing good is like reaching for a tool in your toolbox.

 

(26:46):

You understand the power of your mindset on your body, on your stress, on your ability to respond. It means you're deciding on purpose how to set these settings in your mind so that you feel a little better regardless of the dumpster fire that's in front of you. Choosing to have a good day for no reason, or in spite of what's happening, or to make something good happen, or to just have good energy, or to look for the good, that is a powerful thing to do. Today's going to be a good day because I'm going to look for something good. I'm going to bring the good. I'm going to have a good attitude. I'm going to be doing a good job. I'm going to be good to other people. I'm going to be in a good mood because it helps everybody else. I mean, right now, it's like you're choosing bad and you don't even realize it.

 

(27:40):

You do it by default. It's like you can be in a bad mood for no reason. That means you can be in a good mood for no reason. It could be five o'clock in the afternoon. It could say, "The first part of the day sucked, but the rest of the day's going to be a good day because I'm going to make it a good day. I'm going to focus on having a good attitude. I'm going to do something good. I'm going to be a good friend. I'm going to find the good. I'm going to make myself be in a good mood. I'm going to do something for a half an hour tonight that always makes me feel good." You can pull this lever, you can make this micro choice at any time. And one last note on choice number two. Is it going to be a good day or a bad day?

 

(28:19):

And why it matters so much is that it's true. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of bad things in the headlines. There's a lot of stressful things going on at work right now, and there's very valid reasons to be stressed or worried. But the settings in your mind matter because they're not going to change the problems that you see in the world. They're not going to change the problems that you may be facing in your life. The settings in your mind change you. They help you face the problems. They help you get through the day. They help you by reminding you that there are things in your control, your time, your energy, your mood, what you focus on. And when you choose to focus on the good, when you choose to focus on your energy, on doing something good, on bringing a good mood to work, that changes how you are able to face the things that are going on in your life.

 

(29:23):

Now let's talk about the third micro choice that is quietly in the background, running your life.

(30:09):

And I want you to be honest as your friend, because this is where a lot of people are lying to themselves. I used to be one of them. I grew up in the generation where they always used to say when I was little, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but then I go to college and I got a different message. You got to be skinny. So it's time to start starving yourself and skipping meals and exercising on an empty stomach and hydrating with caffeine. And then I wonder why I have anxiety and I'm constantly bitchy and stressed out. And I can hear you saying, "Mel, I know I need to have better fuel, but I don't have time. It's so busy in the morning I don't have time." Okay, well then you're going to love this because I'm not going to ask you to become a new person.

 

(30:55):

I'm not going to ask you to overhaul your diet, track macros, buy a blender, join some wellness cult. That's not what we're doing here. The choice is very simple. Are you feeding yourself or are you starving yourself? I get it. You're late. You grabbed your phone, you did this, you didn't do that, you didn't have.

 

(31:11):

But then you wonder why you're irritable? You wonder why you can't focus, why everything feels hard, why you're snapping at people you like, why you feel anxious, why the littlest things at work just piss you off? This choice, am I running on fumes or am I running on fuel? Affects your entire day and it starts when you wake up. So as I was getting ready to have this conversation with you, I was doing a bunch of research and my friend, Dr. Nicole Lapera, who goes by the holistic psychologist online, she's extraordinary, she's brilliant. She's a New York Times bestselling author. Tens of millions of people follow her because she breaks down all kinds of psychology and research and teaches you how you can apply it to heal and improve aspects of your life. And she puts up this post and it was a post about the importance of eating protein first thing in the morning.

 

(32:04):

She basically explained that in the first 30 minutes of the day when you wake up, your cortisol levels are the highest. Now cortisol is that, they call it the stress hormone, but it's highest in the morning because arguably it's supposed to help you get going. So for the first 30 minutes of the day when your cortisol levels are the highest, you may be grumpy and irritable and upset and you don't even know why. And then she says that eating protein first thing in the morning is a very important thing to do to help you regulate your emotion. And in the caption she went on to describe that it's important because regulating your blood sugar directly helps you regulate your emotions. And this has been a huge shift in my life. I mean, if you've been listening to the podcast recently, you know that health is my number one goal.

 

(33:00):

And in particular, I have listened to all the medical and nutritional and scientific experts that have come on this podcast in every single possible discipline who have all been talking to us about the critical nature of protein, protein for focus, protein for muscles, protein for energy, protein for life. I was never a big breakfast person. And I have started to force myself to change my own habits and follow this expert advice and really take fueling myself first thing in the morning seriously. Are you going to make time to fuel yourself or are you going to fly out the door and just dig around in your backpack and eat that half eating granola bar, dust all the sandy stuff in the bottom of your backpack off it and choke it down? Or are you going to try to cover up that giant hole where your food should be, namely your stomach with a big cup of coffee and 15 sugar packets in it?

 

(33:56):

And if you think I'm exaggerating, I really want to share some wisdom from somebody that I absolutely love. His name is Professor Carl Pillimer. He is a professor at Cornell. He is behind one of my favorite bodies of research. We've talked about it on this podcast. It's called The Legacy Project. Now, Dr. Pillimer has spent years compiling the best life advice and wisdom from people in their 80s, 90s, and 100s. And I have been citing his research for a long time in my work, so I was so thrilled when he agreed to come on the podcast. Now, he's also in clinical practice as a psychologist, but I just love that he has this research study for 22 years interviewing people near the end of their lives so that you and I can learn the wisdom about how you live a good life from people whose lives are almost over.

 

(34:51):

He refers to the people in his study as the elders. And what you're about to hear is one of my favorite pieces of advice that come from the Legacy Project, specifically. What do you do if you're feeling irritable, cranky, not like yourself, and now you're taking it out on the people that you care about? Guilty. I mean, admit it, you literally give the best people the worst of you. You blame work stress and the fact that you're tired and hungry for why you just scream cried at somebody in your kitchen that you're related to. What I love about Dr. Pillimer, and I really want you to just sit with this, is this wisdom and insight that relates to this micro choice, are you running on fumes or are you running on fuel that comes from two decades of research? Here's what Dr. Pillimer had to say on the Mel Robbins podcast.

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (35:52):

If you're having a lot of serious arguments, you find there's a pattern to arguments rather than therapy, the cure might be a sandwich because my wife and I though would be traveling and we'd forget to eat and our argument like who chose the bad hotel or why we got there after the museum closed would be unbelievably intense until we realized that we were hungry. And there's good research on this, Mel, showing that you should not argue when you're hungry. And so one of the things the elders said, like one of their little lessons is if you're having an intractable argument, get something to eat and see what happens.

 

Mel Robbins (36:32):

I love that advice. And here's what I'm realizing. My mouth is kind of open because I'm now processing what you're saying. My husband and my kids do that with me because I will get so lost in what I'm doing and then next thing you know, I'm bickering about something just so stupid and I'm the jerk, right? And somebody in my family will go, "When's the last time you ate?" And sure enough, five or six hours ago.

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (36:59):

Try it out a cup of tea and a biscuit if you're having a terrible argument. So that was one of their key points.

 

Mel Robbins (37:04):

And that's why this third micro choice is so powerful. And you can make it at any single point in the day. I'm hoping that you're gaining the self-awareness that you recognize the power of what do you reach for? Today's going to be a good day, and am I going to run on fuel? Those three choices together, holy cow, they set you up differently, don't they? Because when you're running on fumes, have you ever noticed that what can feel like a massive emotional problem, it's so overwhelming. It's overwhelming because you are in a human body and brain running on empty on fumes. That's why you feel like you can't handle this. And it's also why if you just take an exhale and you get a great bowl of chicken soup, no, it doesn't erase the problem, but with some fuel, you often have a different perspective.

 

(37:58):

With some fuel, you have renewed energy. How many times have you had a day where you catch yourself and you think, "Oh my God, why am I being such a monster? Why is everything pissing me off at work today? Why am I not myself today?" And then you realize you're stuck dealing with a depleted body and mind. And so what is the takeaway? Stop pretending you're fine running on fumes. This isn't making you skinny. It's making you anxious and irritable. One, fuel choice early in the day, especially in the morning, especially protein. If you're somebody who does intermittent fasting, great. Maybe that works for you, but the question is still the same. When you do break the fast, what are you fueling yourself with? Are you choosing something that stabilizes you and empowers you and energizes you? Or are you choosing something that gives you a quick spike?

 

(38:54):

Tons of carbs, tons of sugar, all kinds of junk, and then crash leaves you still feeling empty. If you feel like you're running on fumes, I want you to take advice from Dr. Pillomer and all the wisdom from 20 years of studying people in their 80s, 90s, and 100s. Just get something to eat and then see what happens. That's the micro choice that has a major impact and it's a lever you can pull at any time. Don't you love this? I love this topic so much. I had so much fun digging into this and really thinking about it, and it's been crazy empowering.

(39:47):

We all have it. You have it every night, so do I, that decides how tomorrow is going to feel. And it happens right when you finally have a second to yourself. Oh my God. The whole day has been for everybody else. Oh my God, work, school. Oh my God, taking care of everybody. You're done with the dinner cleanup. The kids are in bed. The dogs have been fed. You've done the dishes. You're done. You're done doing things for other people. And then you look at the clock and you think, okay, I really should go to bed. But you don't because there is a choice sitting right there in front of you at the end of every day. Oh my God, the micro choice is right there. Are you going to scroll or are you going to sleep? And you know what I used to say?

 

(40:37):

Here's what would happen when this moment would hit because you have this moment every night, so do I. Everybody does. We're going to have this moment for the rest of our lives. Okay? You know what I used to say before I figured out these four micro choices? Here's what I used to say. I used to say, "I should go to bed. I should just go to bed. I should not even pick up the phone. I should just go to bed." And I want you to notice something because that's what you say to yourself too. You're sitting on the couch, you're done watching TV, you go to turn TV off and you're like, "God, I really should go to bed." And you're reaching for your phone or you already have your phone in your hand, but notice when you say, "I should go to bed." That's not making a choice.

 

(41:22):

When you say, "I should go to bed," you're making yourself wrong.

 

(41:29):

When you stop in that moment, every single night you have this moment and instead you give yourself a choice. Mel, do you want to choose to scroll or do you want to go to sleep? You're not making yourself wrong. You are empowering yourself to make a choice. There's a huge difference between, "Oh, I should go to bed. I should put the phone down." Versus, "Well, I can either scroll or I can go to sleep. What do I choose?" My husband has this one all figured out. Every single night like clockwork, it gets to be 8:45, nine o'clock tops, and he's either already asleep and has missed half of the episode that we've been watching together on the couch or he's like, "Okay, he's getting up. Okay, it's time to go to bed." Then there's me. That's the moment. That's the moment right there. That's the micro moment.

 

(42:31):

And you know what I do? I literally, without clockwork, before I figured this micro choice out, I would just reach for the phone and then I'd tell myself, I'd say to Chris, "I just got to check one more thing." And then that thing takes 45 minutes. And then after I've been on the phone for 45 minutes, guess what? I'm not even tired anymore. So now I'm up for another hour or two, like an idiot. I was tired at nine o'clock when he was going to bed, but now that I've been scrolling on the stupid phone for 45 minutes, now I'm up. So now I'm like, I got another hour in me. And I'm going to be honest with you because I've really tried to take apart this moment at night, this micro choice. Do I scroll? Do I go to bed? And I'm wondering if you feel this way too.

 

(43:18):

There's this feeling as Chris is going off to bed and I pick up my phone. I almost feel a little rebellious. I feel a little naughty. You know what I mean? It's the same feeling that I had in college when I would smoke a cigarette. You light up a cigarette, it's kind of like a giant F you to the world. You're like, "I'm a badass. I'm in charge of my decisions." And when you pick up your phone at night, there is this rebel thing that you feel like, "I'm in control of my time, so I'm going to use it to scroll past all this stuff I don't need to know right now and make myself feel insecure and stressed out and freaked out about the state of the world. But damn it, I'm choosing to do this because all day long I had to react to you dumb asses at work.

 

(43:59):

And so now I'm going to sit here like the badass that I am and brain rot while I scroll on my phone late into the night." It's almost like that moment right there. It's like it's the first time all day that your life is yours and you're stealing the time back from everybody else. Researchers have labeled this revenge bedtime procrastination. You're getting revenge on everybody all day long who stole your time. And then you delay sleep to psychologically reclaim some freedom after a day that didn't feel like it was your day. But here's the problem with this micro choice. I get it because I've spent a long time doing this. What starts out as a little bit of time, gets out of control and then it becomes part of your bedtime routine. And then you need it as the precursor to going to bed. It's not relaxing.

 

(45:00):

As you're sitting there going just five more minutes, your nervous system is like, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. We're not landing the plane. We're taking off again. Why are we going back up in the air? I thought we were coming in for a landing and we were about to go to bed. What the hell is going on? " And then you're in it. Then you're in it just like in the morning, just like in the morning. The first thing you reach for, next thing you know, it's 30 minutes and it's all the same stuff that pulls you in and brings you down that rabbit hole. The headline that punches you in the chest, the video that you can't unsee, the comment section that makes you lose face and humanity, a random argument that you didn't even join, but now you're pissed off about what these total idiot strangers, a third of which are butts are arguing about at 11 o'clock at night.

 

(45:39):

When you do that at night, you're telling your brain, "Hey, hey, stay alert. Keep scanning. Don't power down. We can't sleep now." That's why you're exhausted. That's why you're having trouble falling asleep. Here's why this matters so much. It's not just that you lose an hour of sleep. It's that you're waking up tomorrow feeling behind. Let me tell you about this study that was led by PhD researcher, Dr. Anne-Marie Chang while she was at Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is in Boston, right where the Mel Robbins podcast is recorded and Harvard Medical School, and it was published in PNAS. Their research found that reading on a light admitting device right before bed, i.e. Your phone delays your internal body clock and it suppresses melatonin. That's the hormone that helps your brain shift into sleep. So the translation for a normal person like you and me is put the phone down, sleep, not scroll.

 

(46:42):

Your phone isn't quote helping you relax. Your phone is telling your brain, "Time for takeoff." We're not landing right now. Now there's one more reason why this micro choice is so important that you start choosing to sleep instead of choosing to scroll. Now, I've been talking about choosing to scroll while you're still on the couch because that's where I was falling into the trap. I've broken my habits around reaching for the phone in the bed and having my phone in the bed. And I was not even aware of the research that I'm about to share with you from a psychologist, Richard Butzen at Northwestern University. But this is research specifically about what happens when this micro choice, am I going to go to sleep or am I going to scroll is not happening on the couch, but you're actually doing this in bed, which is probably more likely where you're doing it.

 

(47:35):

And I get it. I get it. Well, it just relaxes me. So I climb into bed and I just watch terrifying headlines and a bunch of reels and I look at things that I don't need to buy and I stare at people's lives that I wish I was leaving. And I look at celebrities and I read all the snarky ... It's very relaxing. So that's what I do. I need to do that. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Wait til you hear this research. Your bed needs to be phone free because your bed is supposed to train your brain to sleep. You have to stop turning your bed into a place where your brain is trained to be awake and wired. I mean, this makes sense, right? If you really kind of zoom out, the idea is simple. Everything about your bed and your bedroom should be like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

 

(48:27):

Let's land the plane. It's time for sleep. Not cuing, okay, pick up the phone and stroll or stress or news or work or shopping or family drama. Your brain is an association machine. It's looking for patterns. So if you turn your bed into an office or a newsroom or a mall, your brain is going to stop connecting bed with sleep. And if you're the kind of person that's developed a habit of needing your phone and needing scrolling to fall asleep, then it probably doesn't surprise you that if you get up in the middle of the night because you have to go to the bathroom and you come back to bed, what are you reaching for? The phone. Because you have trained yourself to believe that you need scrolling in order to fall asleep. The micro choice is, do I choose to scroll or do I choose to sleep?

 

(49:21):

And it's the same thing I've been explaining this entire conversation. One tiny choice that has huge, huge consequences to it, positive or negative. And here's what you can do. This is what I call, before you talk yourself in, you need to talk your phone in. And the American Academy of Sleep wants you to tuck your phone in 30 minutes before you're going to go to sleep. That's, I think, something you can do. And so that means this micro choice needs to happen 30 minutes before you want to climb into bed. Choose to go to sleep instead of scrolling. What are you going to do in those 30 minutes? You could do anything while your phone is charging by yourself. Wash your face. Lay out your clothes for the morning. Take a shower. Oh, you know what I do? I take a bath. I take a hot bath.

 

(50:15):

I pour in the Epsom salts. I sit there. Read a book. Listen to an audiobook that relaxes you. Stretch for two minutes. Make your bed and your routine feel like something cool. It starts associating it with sleep. You could light a candle, you could fluff the pillows, you could turn the lights down a little bit. You could start creating a bedtime ritual that you absolutely love because when you start to make a choice, you start respecting yourself. And when you choose to sleep, you don't just wake up with more energy. You wake up with more capacity to get through the day. And that's the entire point of the conversation today. You can't control everything that's happening out there, but you can make these four micro decisions that help you take control. You can stop handing your time and your energy and your peace away in these tiny moments.

 

(51:20):

And one of those moments is your bedtime. And if you don't trust yourself, set an alarm. Set an alarm for 30 minutes before you need to go to bed. And when it goes off, it means I'm done talking to the world. I'm done allowing things into my brain. No more headlines, no more emails, no more video games. And if you want this to be really easy, do the simplest, most effective thing. Put your phone when you tuck it in somewhere far away from your bed. Mine is always in my bathroom or in my closet. It's where I have two chargers. That means when the alarm goes off, I have to get up out of bed and go turn it off. And by the time I get to my bed, I'm awake enough that I'm not reaching for it. I just turn off the alarm. I'm done.

 

(52:00):

I don't even pick it up. I don't take it with me. And here's one more tip. You know what you could do?

 

(52:06):

Is after you tuck in your phone and you got your 30-minute ritual and you're climbing into bed, put out whatever it is that you're going to reach for first thing in the morning. Is it your tennis shoes? Is it your gym bag? Is it the leash? Is it your ski poles? Is it your journal? Is it your meditation? Set yourself up to make the right choice first thing tomorrow morning. And that's how this not just becomes four little choices that you can make every day. It becomes little levers, tipping points in your day where you can take back control. That's it. That's how you take your power back. All of it. Four simple micro choices every day that create major positive change. And yeah, they seem simple, but isn't that why you love them? You can remember them. Now that you see them, don't you see it as so obvious?

 

(53:03):

It's like, oh my gosh, they were there all the time, Mel. Thank you for pointing that out. That is so cool. I just love this. I can't wait to hear what happens in your life. When you choose to reach for something every morning that feels good, that sets you up, that calms you down. I can't wait to hear what happens in your life when you choose to tell yourself every single day, "Today's going to be a good day. I'm going to make something happen that's good. I'm going to have good energy." Because the more you wake up and make that choice, the more it becomes the truth. The more it's the filter that your brain uses all day, the more the settings in your mind change. And the same thing with the choice of, am I running on fumes or am I putting fuel in my body?

 

(53:54):

That decision alone is going to change how your day goes. And of course, this moment at night, oh my God, you and I have this moment for the rest of our life. You will not live a day for the rest of your life where at night you are faced with that choice. Do I scroll? Do I sleep? And now that you know that it's a choice, I really hope as your friend, you make the choice that empowers you the most. And the best thing of all about all these four choices is you don't have to do all four and you don't even have to do them today because they are there every single day. And even if you miss one, you can then pick up with the next one. And if you miss two, you can pick up with the third. And if you blew the entire day, you can pick up with the fourth.

 

(54:43):

Okay, I'm just going to sleep and call this day a wash, and then I'm going to wake up tomorrow and reach for the right thing. Remember, micro choices, massive impact. And in case no one else tells you today, I also wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life. And there's no doubt in my mind that when you start to take these four micro choices seriously, you will experience a massive positive change in your day-to-day life. Alrighty. I'll see you in the very next episode. I'll be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play. And for you sitting here watching with me on YouTube, I just want to say, please share this with somebody. Don't just sit and watch, please do something. And take a minute and subscribe to this channel because it's really a way that you can support me in bringing you new videos every single day.

 

(55:39):

And I'm sure you're looking for something really inspiring to watch to really move you. So I want you to check out this video next.