The #1 Journal Exercise to Become the Person You’ve Always Wanted to Be

(01:37):

And it turns out the entire staff here at 1 4 3 studios is reading this book. I am not kidding. Who knew? Everybody was into fairies. And before you think this is an ad, this is not an ad. This is just your crazy friend Mel, sharing her latest obsession. It's flying off the shelves everywhere. It is trending on TikTok. And I know why it is magical and it got me thinking about something. What if there was a whole other world that you could tap into kind of like a portal to the ferry world that you could pass through only in this world you would be happier. What if I told you that it is possible to tap into this other happier world and all you need in order to open that portal between where you are right now and the happiness that you want to feel is a pen and a piece of paper?

 

(02:34):

Oh my gosh, I was so caught up in talking to you about this book that I just realized I didn't even introduce myself. So let's back up a little bit and let's step into the here and now. It's Mel. I'm so glad that you're here, whether you're listening for yourself or because somebody that you love shared this episode with you, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family and thank you for making this podcast one of the most popular podcasts in the entire world. It is really an honor to spend this time with you and I want to acknowledge you for something before we jump into the amazing topic today. You could be listening or watching a million things right now. I mean, you could be listening to this juicy fantasy audio book that I'm currently addicted to the court of Thorn or roses, but you're a lot smarter than me because you chose to listen to something that can help you create a better life instead of trying to escape yours by disappearing into a world of fairies.

 

(03:30):

And that brings me back to this idea of two worlds. Just imagine that there are two different worlds, the one that you're living in right now and the world I want you to tap into. Because what you're going to learn today is that there is a portal to a happier you. And I know how to open that portal and I can teach you to pass through it. See, I have this exercise that I cannot believe I haven't shared with you on this podcast yet. It's a very simple exercise that will really give you the clues to how you can be happier not a year from now, not a decade from now, but happier in your life day to day. And this is an exercise that has helped thousands of people. It's an exercise that has helped me over and over and over again to pass through that portal, to go from where I am right now to a different world and to bring back clues so that I can be a happier me here.

 

(04:36):

And I know you're thinking Mel Robbins has lost her damn mind, but I'm going to tell you something, you keep listening because if you really think about it when you're reading a fantasy novel like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Fourth Wing, isn't it interesting that the main character has this ability to pass between worlds? Whether you're talking about Harry Potter and he's going from the muggle world to the wizard world, they always learn something that they need to bring back into the present. It's as if they open up the doors to a different realm precisely for the purpose of learning something. And that's what you and I are going to do today. And if you are still going, oh, for God's sake smell, what are you talking about? Good, good question what I'm saying because if you're kind of questioning what I'm saying as you're driving your car or walking your dog or you're at the gym, it means you're listening with intent.

 

(05:38):

And I want to assure you, we're not going to do a bunch of woo woo stuff. This is not a meditation or a mantra and you don't need a magic wand. What we're going to do today is based on science. And here's the coolest part, it taps into your own life experience. And if you're listening for yourself today and you're thinking, yeah, I'd like to be happier, let's pass through the portal mill. Let's go to this different world. Let me find some clues about how I can be happier right now. You're going to absolutely love this conversation, but I also want you to keep the people that you love in mind because this simple exercise that you and I are going to do today, I want you to share it with them because it will change their life for the better. So make sure to send this episode to the people that you love as just a little gift from your world to theirs.

 

(06:26):

So let's talk about this exercise. Now, I had been doing this little exercise for as long as I can remember. It was like my own little secret, magic trick, right? A fail proof way to tap into happiness whenever I felt lost and I had never shared this exercise with anyone else. Well, that all changed. One day in 2020, here's what happened. 

(07:18):

She had been having a really tough time. Let me explain a little bit about what was going on. She had graduated from college in the middle of Covid. Maybe you had that experience too. Maybe somebody that you love had that experience and the life that she had been looking forward to had literally imploded. I mean absolutely nothing was going according to plan. She had been working for four years while she was in college to save enough money to take a service trip to Cambodia. After she graduated, it was canceled. Instead of living with her friends in the city, she was stuck living at home with us. And you want to know how she dealt with the sadness and the depression and the disappointment and the grief by drinking herself into the ground. So she had put on extra weight. She had become really sedentary. She hated how she looked.

 

(08:02):

She hated how she felt. She hated her life. She had nothing to look forward to. And she had hit this point where she could no longer contain or hide the massive breakdown and downward spiral that she was in. So she walks into the kitchen after clearly crying all day and said to us, I am so stuck. I'm lost. I'm miserable. I don't know what to do. And I turned and I looked at her and I said, actually, I think you do. You're just scared. And she looked back at me and I said, no, I think you know what to do and I'm going to prove it to you. Take out a piece of paper. And she did draw a line down the center and on the left hand side of that piece of paper, I want you to write two words, happy me.

 

(09:01):

Now close your eyes and imagine a world where you remember being happy or more confident or feeling more alive. It could be a great memory from the recent past or you might have to go all the way back to childhood. And there was this long silence. And as we stood there, I could tell that she was traveling back in her mind to this other world. But all of a sudden she exhaled and she opened her eyes and she said, the last time I remember being happy was my senior year of high school. And I said, okay, great. 

(10:03):

I was with my friends all day and going to classes. I was so looking forward to going to college. I was playing varsity lacrosse. I was exercising six days a week. I was only drinking two days a week on the weekends with my friends. I had a great relationship with the guy I was dating. I was home probably for dinner with you guys four nights a week. And as she described it, I could see that world too. And I said, great. Now look back to the piece of paper. And on the right hand side, I want you to describe the world that you live in right now. And she sighed and she said, well, I sleep until noon when I wake up, I don't know what to do every day. I drink every night because I'm so depressed. I don't ever see my friends because scattered after we graduated and plus Covid and I don't have anything to look forward to.

 

(11:06):

I mean this trip to Cambodia was canceled. My job doesn't start for another six months. I'm not exercising. I'm eating like crap. I sit in my bed most days and I'm spending so much time on social media. And I said, great. Compare those two worlds and she got it right away and I bet you're getting it, aren't you? Because there are two worlds, aren't there? There's the world that you're in right now and another world that you can access when you close your eyes and you ask yourself, when do I remember being happier? See, our daughter immediately made connection between these two worlds, and that's how easy it is to pass between them. She understood that the happier version of herself was right there for her to see everything that she described in the world that she lived in as a senior in high school offered the clues that she needed to bring back into her world today so that she could become happier, more confident, and feel alive again.

 

(12:24):

Because here's the truth, you do know how to be happy. That's why you miss feeling it. You can only miss feeling something that you know and your own life experience offers a map to a world where you do feel happier today. And here's the mistake we all make You think you need to permanently escape your life in order to be happier, to go on vacation, to blow up your relationships, to move and change your jobs. No, you don't. All you need to do is learn how to open the door to that other world while you're still living day to day in this one because you're already starting to think back and travel through time and tap into that world where you felt a little happier. I want to give you a very important tip that will make this exercise even easier. And it's based on research.

 

(13:21):

Here it is. All you have to do as you pass through the portal in your mind and you step into this other world is find one clue. You just need one thing. One thing that you can bring back with you to this moment. That's all you need to look for. And when you and I come back after we hear a short word from our sponsors, I'm going to walk you through this exercise together and it's about to get downright magical. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel. I am so glad you are traveling between worlds with me today, and I want to jump right back into this portal of happiness with you. 

(15:14):

I would get up every morning and I was with my family, and then I would go to school and I got out of school at two o'clock. Then every day after school, I would go to dance practice. I loved dance practice. Dance was like this creative expression of who I was and it was so amazing. And then I would come home and I'd have dinner with my family and I'd go to bed, and then I'd wake up and do the whole thing all over again. And can you guess what the clue is that she needs to bring back into her world right now? If you're thinking dance or some form of creative expression, you're exactly right. And it doesn't have to be dance every evening. It could be take one class a month from now. It could be sign up for some sort of series.

 

(16:02):

But when you bring something from that other world into your life now you can see how just adding that one thing suddenly energizes you, suddenly reminds you of who you are, suddenly brings something alive inside of you and it helps you to start feeling free again. Isn't this so cool? So let me share another one with you. So Maddie, who is one of our amazing video editors on the team, shared about a time in her life when she was super happy and she was getting her MFA in documentary filmmaking. And as she described her life, she would get up every single day at like six 30. She would go exercise, then she would go to class and she felt so creatively energized. And after class she went to the same coffee shop every single day. The Thinking Cup on Newberry Street, that was her spot in Boston.

 

(16:58):

And she would sit there like the filmmaker that she is, and she would sit with her journal and everybody in the coffee shop knew her and greeted her when she came in and she felt the sense of community. Then at night, she'd be helping some of her fellow classmates shooting their films and she'd collapse in bed at 11 and then the next morning, get up and do it again. The reason why I'm telling you the details of what Maddie shared is because she had this huge epiphany on the call this morning with the team where she realized as she allowed herself to pass through that portal and step back into this world where she was a happier person and then come back into the present moment and examine her life right now, she realized something amazing. She's really happy right now because her current life contains all the clues that were in the other world.

 

(17:57):

She wakes up at six o'clock in the morning and exercises on her commute. She's always listening to some audio book. We all know which one she's listening to right now. And she arrives close to the office by around seven 30 in the morning. And you know what she does? For 45 minutes, she sits in a coffee shop with her journal. Everybody at the coffee shop now knows who she is and greets her when she walks in. And then she goes into work and she's working on creative projects. And then she gets home and she's with somebody that she cares about, and then she wakes up and she does it all over again. Those little things, those little clues that built a happy life, she has brought them to her life. Now, this is so important for you to hear because you think it's the big things and it's actually no, just one little thing.

 

(18:51):

Maddie's super happy in her life right now, and she's able to see so many similarities between that time in her life in the world where she was an MFA student and the world that she is living in right now. I want to share with you what mine looked like. At first. It was kind of 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, well, I'm kind of happy right now. So when was I really Content really just didn't feel like I needed to change anything really in my day-to-day life. 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 girlfriends.

(20:39):

I loved always being on the move. I loved that every day was different. I loved that I didn't sit at a desk and I loved that I was helping people, but my favorite part of the day, you want to hear what it was. Walking home, I loved walking home. I was with my best friend, Matt Myers. He was actually one of my supervisors at work. We became amazing friends and we would walk home every day together and walk and talk and talk and walk and talk and talk in cases. And we would go from Chinatown through the Bowery up into the village. We would walk up the east side on the lower East side. He would peel off around St. Mark's because that was the neighborhood that he lived in. I was so far from home, it didn't matter. I would keep on walking through Union Square and somewhere around the thirties I would sync up with Chris, who I was starting to date.

 

(21:30):

He lived in Murray Hill. And then we would walk and talk and walk and talk from the thirties all the way up to 68th Street on the west side. I moved through all those neighborhoods. The city was alive. I felt alive. I loved being outside. It was just incredible, absolutely incredible. And then I would wake up and do it again the next day. And here's the clues. Number one, I was getting outside every day and getting a walk. And I love that I do that first thing in the morning, and I love getting outside for a walk. I love walking and talking with people that I care about, whether it's my husband or the group of girlfriends that I have up here. Now that I live in southern Vermont, I was with friends because I lived with them and I was doing work that was dynamic and creative and that help people kind of sounds a little like the life of your friend Mel Robbins now, doesn't it?

 

(22:26):

And as I share these stories with you, I hope it's giving you a peek, a glimpse into what that other world is for you, because it might be a small clue, something like, boy, I used to love doing puzzles, and if I just simply got a puzzle at the library or bought myself a puzzle or pulled one out of that cupboard that I haven't opened in 10 years and I put it out on the table, it is literally an invisible string that connects this world that you're in right now to that other world and the portal that you pass through where you were happier. 

(23:25):

I'm serious. And I'm also serious about walking you through this exercise and helping you spot the clues that you find when you close your eyes and you allow yourself to go through that portal into time and step into that world where you were a you. And that's exactly what we're going to do when we come back. Stay with us. Welcome back. It's Mel, I'm so glad you're still here. And you know what? Maybe you've already downloaded the court of Thorn and Roses because now that we're talking about fantasies in different worlds, you're like, what is this thing that Mel is listening to that has got her all talking about different worlds? She's on a roll today, but I'll tell you what you have definitely been doing as you were listening to our sponsors. I guarantee you that your mind has been drifting to that other world.

 

(24:19):

Maybe you're already imagining yourself doing puzzles when you were little or twirling around in dance class or sitting in that cafe journaling or training for that 5K race that you used to do with your girlfriends when you used to live in the city. And you know what? That's the whole point of our conversation today, that you can drift back to that world for yourself throughout this entire conversation back and forth, in and out of your imagination. Isn't this cool? So now it's your turn. If you have a piece of paper or a pen that's near you, great, pull it out. And all you're going to do is draw a line down the center of the paper. And if you don't have a piece of paper, who cares? You understand the power of your mind. I want you to just think through this with me right now. You can imagine a piece of paper. You can imagine the line down the center. You can imagine yourself writing the two words, happy me. And now I 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.

 

(25:40):

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. And as you start to picture yourself in this world, start looking around out because now the reason why you're there is because you're there to find clues and they're 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?

 

(26:35):

How did you spend your time? And what was your favorite part of the day? Amazing. Amazing. Now, there's a couple things I want to point out when you start to play around with this, right? And the first thing is this.