--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. You know, every once in a while, you need someone to roll on up beside you, tap you on the shoulder and remind you that there is so much untapped potential inside of you. I don't think you even realize what you're capable of. So I'm going to start off by dedicating this episode to you and to the potential that is lying dormant inside of you. Because that's gonna end today. We're gonna tap into that potential.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And look, if you're already at a point in your life where you're like, "I have achieved so much success, Mel, I surprised myself. That's how I feel about myself." Guess what? This conversation is still gonna ignite a breakthrough because regardless of what you've accomplished, you have not reached what you're capable of yet, and neither have I. Or if you're listening right now and you're like, "Oh, I feel blah, unmotivated and unproductive." Boy, have I been there so many times in my life. I have been so sick of my excuses, but I had no idea what to do about it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's the thing. After today, you are going to know what to do about it because you already know that you have this extraordinary potential. That's why you're frustrated. The issue is that you don't know how to unleash it. Well, that's going to change today because one of the world's most respected researchers and professors at NYU is in the house today. And you will leave this conversation with a three-step roadmap that makes leveling up your life easier than you think.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel. I cannot wait to jump into this conversation because you're going to learn how to have a breakthrough based on research. And I'm talking a breakthrough on all different kinds of levels. So whether you're trying to have a breakthrough because you want to level up an already successful life, or maybe you need a breakthrough on a creative project, you're just sick of the writer's block, or you just need a breakthrough in every aspect of your life because it's like, "Oh, you feel blah or unmotivated or unproductive." Well, guess what? Class is in session. You're going to love learning from NYU's Professor Adam Alter.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So let me tell you a little bit about the professor of your potential. He is a renowned researcher and professor at NYU's Stern School of Business and the Robert Stansky Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton University, where he also completed two fellowships. He is the author of three New York Times bestsellers, including the one that we are going to unpack today. That one's called *The Anatomy of a Breakthrough*. I cannot wait for you to get the roadmap to unleashing your full potential.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And one of the best ways, by the way, that you can not only tap into your potential, but also support the people that you love is by sharing this roadmap and Dr. Alter's research and this episode with them, too. And I'm sure when we're talking about feeling a little stuck or tapping into your potential, it's probably somebody who comes to mind right now where you're like, "You know, you need to strike that up by, you know, you're capable a little bit more." How about you let Professor Alter remind them that you are capable of so much more and it's time to follow his research-backed three-step plan to level up your life?
--:-- Mel Robbins: All righty. Please help me welcome the incredible Dr. Adam Alter to the Mel Robbins podcast.
--:-- Adam Alter: Thank you for having me. I'm ready to have a breakthrough.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Good. I'm ready to help you have a breakthrough. Okay, great. So you've just spent all this time researching the anatomy of a breakthrough. And so there's actually a whole process that you can break down for us?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. So, I think the problem with being stuck is it feels very personal. It feels very uncomfortable and it feels like it's a bit of a mess. And that's the way people describe it when they have it, when they feel it. But the whole point of this book was to say there is a roadmap. And if you follow the steps, you will get unstuck. It's just that most of us don't know what those steps are. That's what the book is designed to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, where the hell have you been my whole life? Crying out loud. I want you to start before we get to the roadmap, talking directly to the person who is listening to this. And they're either listening for themselves because they're going through this moment in life where they're like, or just kind of blah, or they're feeling stuck, or they're listening and someone in their life that they love is really stuck. What can they expect to learn from you today and how might their life change based on really learning this research about the anatomy of a breakthrough?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. So the first thing to understand is that getting stuck and being stuck is universal. It's part of what it is to be human. And that's liberating for a lot of people because it feels like this very personal affront. You don't recognize how many other people around you are stuck, but it turns out we're all stuck in some respect. That's the first thing to understand. The second thing to understand is that there are actually things you can do systematically one after another to get unstuck. It may feel like a mess. It's complicated. It's hard to understand how you can get through it. But in many, many cases, there is a path through, and I'm going to try to share some ideas about how we can get from being stuck to making progress, to hitting breakthroughs.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So Dr. Alter, let's talk about what the word "stuck" even means.
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. So when we throw that word around, "I feel stuck. I am stuck. I'm stuck in life. I'm stuck in this job." As a researcher, what do you want us to think about when we hear the word "stuck" or what it actually means or feels like?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah, I think there are two kinds of stuck. There's the one kind where you say, "I want to be at point Z and I'm at point A and I need to figure out the path from A to Z that's as short as possible." And the destination is obvious. I've got a goal, there's something specific I need to reach. It might be a job related goal, might be a relationship, whatever it is. Might be like, "I want to get my nursing degree," or it might be, "I'm sick of being single." So that's when you have a goal and you feel a little overwhelmed. Why would you be stuck if you know what you want? Because you haven't been able to get from A to even B, on the way to Z. So that's the one. I think that often is easier to solve.
--:-- Adam Alter: There's the other kind of stuck that's just like, "Blah. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Things just feel kind of dull and gray. And I don't know where I'm supposed to be." It might be your career, a relationship, a friendship. Life just feels like it's kind of been leeched of all the things that make it really rich and interesting. And that's a very sort of diffuse kind of stuckness where it's not attached to one specific thing. And that's incredibly common. So those are very different. One is "I can't complete this goal." The other is "I don't even know which way to turn to create the next goal." And so they're a little bit different, but those both exist. And I'm going to talk about what I think the best interventions are.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There are listeners to this podcast in 194 countries. And if I had to boil down the kind of universal sentiment on the looking for help or needing inspiration and guidance, the complaint of feeling a loss of direction is, I think, one of the biggest things that people struggle with.
--:-- Adam Alter: I think that's right. It's an incredibly common response that I've had to this book and to talking about these issues. The way life is structured for us today, there is a lot of emptiness. And a lot of what we spend our time doing does not build on the other moments we spend so that we're building towards something that feels meaningful, that is substantial. And I think a lot of people feel that there's an emptiness to what we're doing a lot of the time.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So is that what we're basically saying if we say we're stuck, that we don't have anything meaningful going on?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah, I've been running a survey on thousands of people around the world, asking them exactly these questions. "What does it mean to you to be stuck? And are you stuck?" First thing I'll say is everyone says, "Yes, I am stuck in at least one respect." And then they can articulate it very quickly. They can write to me in the response what they're stuck with and what's affecting them. A lot of them, it's very narrow. "I've been trying to learn this piece on the piano for the last six years and I can't do it and it frustrates me every day." And then for other people, it's much broader. It's like, "My whole life is one big sticking point. I don't even know where I'm going. And each day goes by and I'm like, how was this day building on the day that came before?" It's a sort of meaninglessness to life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, which is so overwhelming, which only makes you feel more lost. Are there particular areas in your research that come up over and over in people's lives where they tend to get stuck?
--:-- Adam Alter: A lot of it is creativity based. So I think it's hard to be creative. You're asking a lot of a human being when you say, "Come up with something new or have a good idea." And we all assume that that's something we should be able to do. And our work often requires that of us. So for a lot of people, it's in that domain. For a lot of other people, it's not work-based. It's about relationships. It's about being stuck in a situation where you have to deal with someone you don't want to deal with, or you don't know how to extract yourself from a situation. And then for other people, it's the broadest kind, which is exactly as we've described. "I don't even know why I'm stuck. I just know that I feel like things aren't the way they should be."
--:-- Mel Robbins: And Dr. Alter, I take it that based on the research, this is something that you're going to experience over and over and over again during the course of being alive.
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah, a huge part of it is accepting the discomfort that comes from being stuck and recognizing that this is universal, that everyone is in this position at some point, often many points of their lives. There's this incredible research talking about how often these things come up for us, these major changes in our lives that make everyone feel stuck. Bruce Feiler has done some research looking at what he calls "lifequakes." Lifequakes are these huge major life events that affect all of us and we're almost always blindsided by them. And they're very often not things we want to happen in our lives.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like what?
--:-- Adam Alter: Like a change in a marital status, a divorce, the death of a loved one, illnesses, things like that. They come up, they happen to us and they are universal. It's part of being a human being. Some of these are really good things, by the way, but they still force you to change what you're doing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like what's a good one?
--:-- Adam Alter: A good one might be like a job promotion or you move to a new town or a new state or a new country and you're excited about it. Maybe a marriage is a good one. Having a child could be obviously a huge positive, but also brings complications and change and you've got to figure those out. So you can be stuck by a good change too. So if your broad philosophy of life is there will be ups and downs and there will be times that are tough, then when those times happen, you don't spend time saying, "Why me? I can't believe this is happening." There's a whole lot of sort of rumination that goes on if you are surprised by the fact that you're in this position. But if broadly speaking, you recognize that this is what it means to be human, you're just a couple of steps ahead. So it liberates you to start acting and to start making the next steps you need to make to get through that part of life in that moment.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that. It does make me wonder though, Adam, the thing that I've noticed about people in my life or when I've been really stuck is that it becomes part of my identity. And I argue to stay where I am. So I would love to have you speak directly to somebody who may be really needing a breakthrough when it comes to relationships, or a breakthrough when it comes to their career or their health. And if you're in your own head and the echo chamber and you're like, "But it's hard, but I've dated all these people, but my all my bosses are jerks." And you kind of have that story, right? What would, how do you get started in terms of like to even get over yourself and the way you're standing in your own way?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. This is a really interesting paradox. When you are stuck, the thing you most want is kind of freedom. "I just want to move. I want to like get unstuck." Yes. It turns out that constraining yourself and having very prescribed steps is really useful. So one process I use with people and with companies as well is a process called a friction audit. And a friction audit is a big part of the book.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Friction audit?
--:-- Adam Alter: Friction audit.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What the heck is that?
--:-- Adam Alter: A friction audit. You know, when you audit, if you're an auditor and you go into the books of a company to audit the books, you're basically saying, "Does this all make sense? Let me pour through each line of the books and make sure I understand it all." And a friction audit is an attempt to find the friction. So what is it that's slowing me down? What is it that's not making me move forward or that's stopping me from moving forward? There are three steps to a friction audit. The first one is to figure out where the friction is. And that takes a bit of doing sometimes. And even asking the question is a first very important step. Because when you feel like you've just described, "My bosses are jerks, things just aren't working for me," you're not being thoughtful about it. You just feel things. It feels bad.
--:-- Adam Alter: So the friction audit, basically the process says, figure out what the biggest sticking points are. They could be, every day there's a part of the day that I look forward to least, makes my life least happy. It's the biggest downward force on my wellbeing. That's a friction point. Or I'm trying to get from A to Z in my career. And I know that I can never get past C because that particular step is a major friction point that I can never get past. It might be a particular boss I have to deal with. It might be an aspect of my job that I can't refine and improve, whatever it is. If you do that process of introspecting and finding the friction point, you are much better positioned to make forward motion because the next step is intervention.
--:-- Adam Alter: Is there a way that I can either weed out that friction point altogether or sand it down, smooth it down? And what that means is for a lot of people it means spending a bit of time, energy, and sometimes money and saying, "This thing is such a big problem for me. It's such a thorn that I need a way to eradicate it, to remove it. And I'm going to throw resources at this problem, whatever resources I have." And so it depends on the context. But if you intervene and you remove that friction point, then you're much better placed to move forward. And the third stage is confirmation, just making sure that you've actually done a good job.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I can share a personal story. So I was crazy stuck probably, oh God, 2019. Super, super, super stuck. And things were going fine. Like on the outside, my life looked great. Married, long time, kids. I finally had gotten to a point where we were making the money and paid off our bills and we could live our life. And I was happy in the work that I was doing. But not. And I felt guilty that I felt stuck. I almost had this shame about the fact that I had a house, I had a marriage intact, I had my health, and yet I felt empty.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And a dear friend of mine, Peter Sheehan, who I'm realizing just friction audited me. We were, I don't even remember where we were, but I was griping to him. And he's been a huge mentor and very close friend of mine. And he is a renowned business strategist. And he said, "Take out a piece of paper." And I said, "OK, what the hell is this going to do?" Because of course, when you're stuck, you're kind of a jerk because you're in your emotion. And you don't know how to get out of that stage one in your emotion. And he said, "I want you to write down absolutely everything about your life that creates friction." That was his exact word. And so I was like, "What do you mean by friction?" And he said, "That you just feel all this resistance and negative emotion to. You resent it. You're annoyed by it. You're frustrated. It's hard."
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so I took out this piece of paper, Adam, and it was like just vomiting on the page. "I hate packing on a Sunday. I hate being away. I hate..." and just the word hate, hate, hate, hate. "I hate how much I miss my kids when I'm traveling. I hate how much I'm working." It was just like... And the second that somebody gave me permission to write it down in that language, it just flooded out of me. It was as if the emotion of stuckness had a place to go.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And once it was on a piece of paper, he basically was like, "Everything on that list is now a project." You either need to remove it from your life and work, or you need to hire somebody or find somebody to do it, or you need to figure out how to do it without complaining about it.
--:-- Adam Alter: And that right there is the roadmap, Mel, because all those things that are causing friction are what are keeping you stuck, but you're not doing anything about it. And so then it became the next side of the page. And you say, "Oh, these are things I can move. These are things I can't." So I got to change my attitude about it. You accept it. You recognize there's not that much you can do, but you've put a label on it and you've said, "You know what? Some things just suck and packing on a Sunday is just how it is. I've got to pack on a Sunday or whatever." That stuff is all just there and it's in a box and not everything in life is going to be wonderful and I'm okay with that.
--:-- Adam Alter: I will say as well that when we think about how to improve life, you described a whole lot of positives. You had a lot of good things in your life as you were going through this process. We often think that the way to make life better is to do more good things. Throw in more fun stuff. I think there's some truth to that. More good things is only better. I think the real bang for your buck in life, if you want to make life better, is to take the lows, the friction points, the things that are hard and bad, and smooth them out or raise them up if you can. I think that's where we should spend our time and attention.
--:-- Adam Alter: Why? Because if you have a lot of good things, but you have a lot of things that are bad that drag you down, they do a much worse job of dragging you down than the good things can do dragging you up. We are often as good as the worst stuff that's going on. And so if you feel like your life is a series of friction points, but you also on paper have all these other good things, the best thing you can do is not add more good things. It's to take your time and attention and deal with those friction points and often your money and other resources that you have. So that's what I would counsel people to generally do. Focus on bringing the lows up a little bit rather than always focusing on the next flashy vacation, the next expensive thing that I'm going to buy. Those things will help a little bit, but they're never going to help as much as lifting up the lows so that they're not quite as low.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Again, a personal story. I have been shocked by how much of an impact therapy with my husband had. So we were going through just a really terrible time, probably four and a half years ago. And we went into counseling and holy cow, it was like a creeper digging up the dead bodies everywhere, kind of awful, painful thing. But on the other side of it, I had no idea how incredible the relationship could be. And it wouldn't have been had we not hit that really painful moment of feeling stuck and just in a standoff. But it is hard to take that step to face the friction. I guess that's what we did. We went and sat with a therapist and did a friction audit on each other and on the marriage. And it was awful. But the dividends that it pays on your life when you go through something like that, it just creates tremendous meaning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So do you think part of the issue with the reason why it's so easy to get stuck is that life just kind of is the same thing over and over again?
--:-- Adam Alter: I think that's part of it. I think the other thing about being stuck, you just described it, is that when something is a friction point, the natural instinct is to turn away from it. It's to say, "I'm going to focus on something else." If you're having difficulties in your relationship, the natural thing is to say, "Well, let's just give it a bit of distance. I got to do some other stuff." You figure out other areas of your life that are more appealing, you throw your attention and time there. And that's a mistake because those friction points, they kind of nag at you, they become traps. And unless you figure them out and actually deal with them, you're not going to be able to raise them up and they can end up being problems for decades.
--:-- Adam Alter: And so I think that's a large part of it. There's a kind of sameness and a repetition to life. And the repetition comes from ignoring those little things that are niggling, that are sort of pulling at your ankle saying, "Hey, do you want to look at me?" And you're like, "No, I don't want to do that. There are some other things I'd rather do instead that are more fun and more appealing." And that's why a friction audit is so useful because it forces you to pay attention to what's not working, which we generally as humans don't have the instinct to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: No. In fact, we not only don't have the instinct to take a sober look at what's not working, we have the instinct to turn away from it.
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah, exactly.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So, was there anything in the research about particular periods in life or ages where you tend to get more stuck?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. So I have some research with a colleague of mine, Hal Hirschfield at UCLA, where we... I was 29 and I felt like I was about to be 30. This was a number of years ago now. I'm much older than that now, but at the time I was 29, about to be 30. And I felt like I had to do something just to kind of show myself that I was still just as vibrant as I'd been when I was younger and so on.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So did you feel stuck?
--:-- Adam Alter: I felt stuck in various ways. I felt stuck.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And how so? Describe it. Put me at the scene. I want to meet the 29 year old Adam. You're not where you are yet. You don't have international bestselling books, all this renowned research. Tell me who Adam at the age of 29 stuck was.
--:-- Adam Alter: I had just finished grad school. I was just starting a new career. I wasn't sure if I wanted to be in the United States still. I was missing people in Australia. I was single. I felt kind of lonely and unmoored in New York City. I didn't really know if I had a place there yet. And I just felt globally more blah than anything. Like things were going well on paper, but I just wasn't sure where I was headed. And I wanted to do something that kind of showed me that I had drive and that everything was working well. So I signed up to run a marathon, my first marathon, my only marathon. And I did this at 29. And Hal and I were talking about this and saying, we were thinking about the idea that the way we count using the base 10 system, the decade, we just count in tens.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh God. Okay.
--:-- Adam Alter: So the way we count using tens, we think of decades as meaningful. So turning 30, 40, 50, 60 is a big deal in our culture. There's no inherent reason why 39 to 40 should be different from 35 to 36, but it does feel different. And because of that, we wanted to investigate whether every 10 years when your age ends in a nine and you're thinking about a new decade, does that push you to think more deeply about your life? And that's what we found. So what you find is there's a little spike in questioning the meaning of life around the nine ending ages. It's like a little end of decade crisis. And you see some interesting things happen on the back of that. So one of them is more people are likely to sign up for marathons the way I did.
--:-- Mel Robbins: At the age of ending a nine?
--:-- Adam Alter: At nine ending ages. Like 29, 39, 49, 59. They're more likely to be interested in things like reading books on aging. You see a little bit of a... people are more likely to buy those kinds of books. They become more focused on aging. You also see some negative things if they have a crisis when they have that questioning of meaning. You see a rise in extramarital affairs. So if you look at the data, there's a rise with nine ending ages for those kinds of affairs, and you even see a small rise in the suicide rate. So there are profound things that happen at the end of the decade for people. And this is a time when we tend to have these little moments of questioning and when we feel quite stuck.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Thank you for breaking this down. I want to hit the pause button real quick. We got to take a quick break, hear a word from our sponsors. While we do, someone in your life has untapped potential. Maybe they feel a little stuck. You know that they need a breakthrough. Please let the professor of potential, Dr. Alter, inspire and empower them with all this information. And after you take a listen to our sponsors and share this with somebody that you love, we're going to be waiting for you. That's right, because he's going to share simple things that you need to do just a few minutes per day that you're going to love. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. You and I are here with NYU's Dr. Adam Alter. All right, Dr. Alter, I got another question. How can you use this research to your advantage? So you're kind of cruising into the 29th, 39th, 49th, 69th birthday. How do you use this to your advantage?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. So there are a few things you can do. One thing is to say that there's something very arbitrary about picking those years. You could be 34, you could be 44, you could be 54, 64, and say, "This is when I want to do this little audit process." I don't have to ask myself whether my life's meaningful only once every 10 years. And actually doing it more often is better for you than doing it once every 10 years and having this huge event where it feels overwhelming. So do this often. Just ask yourself maybe once a year, maybe it's your birthday. Maybe you don't want to do that on your birthday. You want to do it on a different day.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think it's the perfect day.
--:-- Adam Alter: It is. That's what I do. But other people might not want to have their birthday be about this process. But do it once a year.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But hold on. I want to push back on that.
--:-- Adam Alter: Please.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because the single best thing that you could do as a gift to yourself is to pull out a blank piece of paper and go, "Where is there friction in my life?" Because what I know based on Adam's research is that if I were to turn my attention to the friction in my life and make it a project to either remove it, smooth it out, or face the stuff that I do not want to face that I know is in the back of my mind and it bugs me, but it's going to bite me in the rear end someday. If you did this, because here's the thing, I'm thinking about this list that I did with Pete. I do it every year. My business, my life, very different right now than it was even like six months ago. And so I think this is like the greatest thing you could do for yourself is to wake up to where are those places in your life where there's like it's almost like stuck is this signal and this flag from your internal navigation GPS going "ding, ding, ding, ding, ding." Turn toward this.
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. I mean, you could do it on your birthday. Absolutely. I think for some people it's a kind of overwhelming moment. And so they don't want to do it on their birthday if they prefer not to, but I'm totally fine with it being on a birthday. The one thing about doing it consistently every year is the list should change. If you're doing a good job of intervening, then that's a moment of confirmation when you can say, "Hey, look, there were these things that two or three years ago I was writing down. I kind of fixed them. I figured out a way past them." That is incredibly reaffirming. It's the opposite of feeling stuck. It's feeling that you've got forward motion. So there's great value in doing that more regularly.
--:-- Adam Alter: The other thing is, if it does happen naturally when you're 39, 49, 59, that's okay. The research suggests that to make meaning and to deal with these moments in a way that's productive, you can do a few things. One is to set yourself a goal, which is why running a marathon or an ultra or a tri or whatever is a good goal because it's an extended goal. It's very defined. It has steps that get you closer to the goal. That's very reaffirming. It's also about connecting with people. So one way we get meaning in our lives is to feel a sense of community, to feel a deep sense of connection with other people. And so if you can do that, if you can make sure that you reach out to all your friends that you've been meaning to reach out to, that will also be very productive on those times when you're questioning the meaning of life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. So doc, I'm going to play the role of the stuck family member. And I have been in a string of jobs that just blew and I've been through a breakup and my life is boring and it's kind of how I feel. How the hell is running a marathon or setting a goal going to change my life?
--:-- Mel Robbins: So the thing itself is not the issue. It's not that you've run a marathon and suddenly you're going to become a person who makes all their money and spends all their time running. That's not what it's about. It's about demonstrating to yourself through the way you're behaving certain things about who you are—that your life has a kind of purpose and that you're the kind of person who can seize an opportunity to approach a goal, reach a goal, and succeed. There's something tremendously valuable about signaling that, especially when you feel globally stuck. So it doesn't actually matter what the goal is. It's not the goal for goal's sake. It's the fact that you are moving towards something that says, "I have achieved. I have done this thing." So that's what the value of a marathon is. It's not for everyone, but for some people, it's very useful. It was very good for me. It did make me feel much better about where I was.
--:-- What are some examples of things that you found in your research that people would pick as a goal to signal something else? Like that I'm moving forward, I'm not going to be defined by this stuckness. Like the fact that I can say I'm going back to school or I'm losing weight. If I'm playing the disgruntled family member, because I think you feel so stuck that there's so much resistance to even the belief that it's going to change, and also resistance to moving yourself in a different direction. You're up against inertia. We're talking physics here. So do you have examples of other goals that you've seen in your research or in the interviews you've done for the book that really have helped people?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. And these things, because it's not about the thing itself, it's just what it signals, they're kind of like palate cleansers that get you ready to do the thing that actually needs to be done. So for a lot of people, that's a very valuable step. The things are often of one of three types. There are athletic pursuits—something like running a marathon, running a tri. And that has the benefit of often getting you moving, which has its own benefits that are separate from all of this.
--:-- Second kind is intellectual. I want to learn a language. I want to learn a new skill. I want to learn to code. It doesn't matter what it is, but it's something that's important to you. It can be directly relevant to your job, so it might actually push you forward, but it could just be like, "I don't know how to do crosswords. I want to get to the point where I can do the Saturday crossword in the New York Times." And then you do that, whatever.
--:-- And then the third kind is creativity based. I want to paint a picture. I want to create a piece of music. I want to create a film. I want to take photos. It doesn't matter what it is, but I want to get better at a particular skill that matters to me. All of those are very valuable in showing you that you can have forward motion, that you can make movements towards a goal. Everyone has their own preference about which one works, but they all seem to work pretty well.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I can give you a bunch of examples from my family. My husband, Chris, has completed that online fitness challenge 75 Hard four times now. My daughter's done it twice. Both times they committed to doing it simply to shake up their life and tap into their potential.
--:-- Here's another one. Just yesterday, my husband got up at six o'clock in the morning to go to a national park service website so he could reserve a campsite for six months from now to the date. Believe it or not, by the time he logged on at six o'clock in the morning, his top two choices were already reserved. He got his third choice for a campsite up at the national park so that our family can climb Mount Katahdin.
--:-- Now, here's what's cool about that. We're not doing it yet. It's just something that we have put out into the future. We made it a goal over the holidays that our family wanted to do that this year as a family. Chris marked his calendar four months ago that this was the date he needed to log on. Yesterday, he logged on at six o'clock in the morning. He got the campsite. These are all small steps forward towards something out in the future that is deeply meaningful to us that really keeps you feeling like you're tapping into the bigger potential of your life.
--:-- I want to make sure that for you as you're listening—whether you're listening for yourself or for somebody that loves you who sent you this episode because they think that you're stuck and they want to see you moving in the right direction and happy and vibrant—I want to make sure that you really get the power of what he is telling you.
--:-- When you are stuck in your life, it's like being lost. When you're lost and your GPS is not connected, you get that spinning sensation where it's like waiting to reconnect, waiting to reconnect. So you don't know where to go. So I think about the goal as if you're saying, "I'm going to climb Katahdin in Maine or Mount Kilimanjaro. That's my goal. Or I am going to learn how to play the piano. I'm going to even dare my friends and bet money that I'm going to play at the local coffee shop in a year. Or I'm going to learn Spanish or I am going to learn more about AI and get this skill for work."
--:-- When you do that, it's as if that internal GPS reconnects. All of a sudden you have put a destination point out in the future. The destination doesn't matter. What matters is that that destination signals it's time to stop spinning, move in the direction, start getting in shape to go up Katahdin, register for the AI class, take up the painting course. When you start moving toward it, it's like the road trip to a new you has begun. Is that why this works?
--:-- Adam Alter: Exactly. Yeah. So as you go through a friction audit, you list all the points of friction. The other thing to list is what are all the things in my life I'd like to be able to do that I can't do now? That's what you start picking from when you do this because it signals not just that you're getting friction out of the way, which is really external to you—it's like saying this thing is outside of me, I want to move it away—but forward motion is something much more personal. "I'm the kind of person who can take on a goal and achieve it." Whatever the goal is, it's something that's on my bucket list. When you do that, you are prepared to move forward with the thing that perhaps really matters to you in that moment.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That makes so much sense. Thank you for explaining that. This feels like a great time to hit the pause button so you can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. While we do, would you please share this episode with somebody in your life who needs this information? They need to be reminded of that potential that is inside them. This will give them the breakthrough. When we come back, Dr. Alter is going to be sharing specific tools that you can use to get unstuck. You're going to love it. We'll be waiting for you after a short break, so stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Thank you for sharing this with people in your life who need to be reminded of their potential. You and I are here getting inspired and learning from NYU's amazing Dr. Adam Alter.
--:-- So Dr. Alter, what's also fascinating about this research is it confirms something that I have certainly felt when I've been stuck in my life or my marriage or my job or with my body and my health: you feel like a victim. The act of setting a goal and then starting to work toward it proves that you're not a victim. Why is it so critical to have something meaningful that you're working on in your life?
--:-- Adam Alter: It's exactly as you've described, because we spend a lot of time asking ourselves, "What kind of person am I?" And it's very disempowering to be stuck. You feel like you are not the best version of you. Whether it's a particular stuckness—"I'm trying to do this very narrow goal and I can't do it"—or whether it's "I just feel kind of blah and I'm not making forward progress," either way, you're not looking at yourself in that moment saying, "I'm an efficacious person who can get stuff done."
--:-- Mel Robbins: What does efficacious mean?
--:-- Adam Alter: I make things happen. I have efficacy. I can make the outcomes that matter to me happen. That's not how you feel in that moment. You feel disempowered and powerless. So the thing about creating a goal that's meaningful to you, that's on a bucket list, and succeeding is that it tells you that you are actually someone who can get stuff done. It counteracts and contradicts that feeling of helplessness. Once you know that about yourself, you are in a much better position to try something, tackle something that's really big and meaningful that's maybe been a sticking point for months or years, rather than being in a position where you're like, "Oh, I feel terrible. Now I'm going to just try this thing that's really overwhelming." You're not in the best position to do that in that moment of powerlessness.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I have this interesting question that I want to ask you. Given that so many of us are going to share this episode with somebody that we love, when you're the person that's stuck and it feels like everyone around you is trying to change you or pressure you to change or help you get out of that rut, is your own fear of admitting that they're right also a big barrier? If you have somebody in your family that's drinking too much or that has really let their health or their weight go, admitting that it's a goal to deal with this also means admitting that other people are right. Did you see any of that social pressure aspect to why people also stay stuck?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. So I really firmly believe that you can't make people care about a goal or an outcome. You can't say to someone, "You're stuck and you have to care about getting unstuck." That's really got to come from the person. You can guide them there. You can show them why it's important. You can have them introspect about it to the point where they say, "You know what, I'm now seeing the light. I understand why it's so important to do this." But you can't bully people into saying, "This thing that's sticking me is a problem and I need to do something about it."
--:-- So I think the best thing you can do as a loved one, as a friend, as a family member is to make it without being judgmental, to make it as clear as possible why this thing matters and gently guide this person along in that direction. Show them that it matters and have them answer some questions about it. The best thing you can do is ask questions. "Do you want this thing to change? Do you think it could be better?" The friction audit is a great example of this because it's not about them. It's not confronting. You just say, "Hey, this is not about you, but tell me all the things that are kind of annoying to you right now. What's a friction point?" By pouring out all of those things onto the page, you then have something you can latch onto and say, "Hey, this seems like it's an issue for you. Let's work on it together." Rather than telling them, "Here's your problem. We're going to fix it together," which often leads people to push back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You do a lot of work with companies. So how does this work apply if you feel like you're on a team and the team's stuck?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. That's originally where I started doing this work was with companies. It wasn't with individuals, but it was the same idea that companies either in the way they interact with customers or internally in their operations have sticking points. Every company, no matter whether it's big or small, even more if it's big, will have this series of bottlenecks and sticking points and red tape and bureaucracy they need to deal with. So this is an attempt to figure out where those points are.
--:-- It's also when you're dealing with customers. A lot of my work is on consumer behavior and human judgment and decision making. Humans don't like stuff that's hard. If you are losing people in a sort of funnel in your interactions with them—in a sales funnel, moving towards making a particular sale—all of those points where you lose them, you can almost always put it down to friction. You're asking them to do an extra thing, an extra click on a website, go to an extra page, make a phone call, make a text, send an email. So I work a lot with companies to say, "Let's figure out where those friction points are and see if we can track what sort of effect it has when we remove those from the process."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can you speak directly to somebody who feels stuck? They want to change jobs. They want to put themselves out there again after a breakup. They want to really go after their financial security, but they're scared. They're scared that they won't find the job. They're scared that they're going to meet somebody else that breaks their heart. Could you talk a little bit about what the research says about why it's so important to do it anyway?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. So the one thing we haven't really talked about is the third section of the book, which is habit. It's actually doing something. It's acting. The single best thing you can do if you feel stuck is to take a minimally viable action. In other words, the smallest possible action that moves you in the right direction. Try to think of what that tiny little action would be.
--:-- If you're in a job you don't like, it might be just learning what the alternatives are. Making a list of alternative job options, alternative industries you might want to work in. Maybe go even to the point of making a list of specific companies that are your goal companies. Then you can go through the pros and cons exercise of figuring out what are the strengths and weaknesses of each one. But even that small act—doing something, moving in the right direction—is enough to signal that you've got forward progress. You can do the bigger stuff later on. But getting the ball rolling is the biggest trick. It's doing the small things so that you're not static. You're actually moving in the right direction.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why is that important?
--:-- Adam Alter: It's important in part because you're signaling to yourself that you are the kind of person who can move. The same issue comes up again, but also because moving from zero to any action is really important in getting the big action to happen. You have to do that step anyway. Once you start doing it, you're more likely to do more.
--:-- There's this classic story of Jeff Tweedy, the front man of the band Wilco, who talks about how when he's trying to come up with creative ideas, it's incredibly difficult. So what he does is this minimally viable action. He says to himself, "When I wake up in the morning and I don't want to be creative—" he writes books and he writes music, sometimes he doesn't want to do either one—"I'm going to spend 10 minutes coming up with the worst sentences I can, writing the worst, most boring music I can." What he's doing is lowering the bar all the way to the ground and saying, "I'm going to be nonjudgmental. I just need to do something." That has two effects. One is that it gets the ball rolling. So when he's trying to do good writing, it's more likely to happen. But the other thing it does is sometimes the things that you think are not good in those moments actually turn out to be better than you think. They actually are more important than you think. That process of being nonjudgmental and just letting little things happen and not saying it has to be perfect is a very useful way of moving forward.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love this 10-minute rule. I also love "assume it's going to be the worst" because you've lowered the bar. Do you have other quick examples? Because I know the person listening is going to be like, "Okay, so what's an example in a job? What's an example with a relationship? What is the minimal viable action that you could take just to get somebody thinking?" Because based on the research, without doing this, you're going to stay stuck. This is step three.
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah, exactly. So the smallest action is the good one. One thing I really like that I find very valuable, and this is what got me unstuck when I was doing a degree I didn't want to do, was experimentation. Figure out the list of options and then start working through them. Compare them to each other. You will never know what is the right option if you don't know what the set looks like and you haven't tasted a little bit of each one. So set up that array and then spend a week on each one and line it up. Maybe that itself won't get you moving forward much, but it will teach you what you do like and what you don't like, what does work and what doesn't work. That's a great minimally viable action: to say, "I'm going to treat at least this part of my life like a long experiment." Once I figure out the best thing forward, then I can be single-minded and focused on exploiting that one opportunity. But you can't make forward motion until you know what that thing is.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to make sure I translate that because that was genius. So basically, let's say your goal is to start working out. If you take on the mindset of being curious and don't turn it into "I'm getting six-pack abs and I'm exercising seven days a week," create an experiment of curiosity. "I'm going to spend the next month figuring out what kind of workouts I like. I'm only going to spend 10 minutes every other day. I'm going to try jump roping. I'm going to try Pilates. I'm going to try a HIIT class." If you turn it into an experiment, this is no longer about getting it right. It's about getting yourself moving.
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah, and you know that when you do an experiment, some conditions are going to be bad. Some things will be better than others, and that's good. You've learned what does work and what doesn't work. Actually, you appreciate what works more when you've seen and tasted what doesn't.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'll give you an example. This podcast is something that I thought about for probably seven years, and it haunted me. You want to talk about stuck and feeling like you're not tapping into your potential? There's this thing you want to do and you're not doing it. I was fully in that mode of the emotion around it, the excuses around it. It really made me miserable. And it showed up when I did that friction list.
--:-- Probably three or more years ago, I made one of those friction lists, which I do all the time now. Right on it was, "I haven't started the podcast yet." The fact that it showed up on the list meant to me that this was an area of my life, an area of potential that I needed to do something about. I didn't start the podcast that day. I made a decision that I was going to start working on it. In your words, I turned it into an experiment.
--:-- It's important for you as you listen and are a fan of this podcast to know that I didn't even really do anything for a year. I would wake up every day and I would take 15 minutes of action a day. The first day, the action was I made a decision I was going to launch a podcast in a year or two. The next day, I simply made a list of podcasts I was going to listen to. That's it. The next day, I listened to a podcast for a little bit of time. The next day, I did a Google search and I learned about the kind of equipment that people use for podcasts. It just went on and on.
--:-- For an entire year, I was so busy doing a research project and becoming a student of the thing that I was interested in before I even did any of the actual steps of recording an episode or figuring out what the audio editing software was. Simply researching podcasts, simply becoming a student of it—every single day when I did something, knowing that it was leading toward this bigger thing, it got me moving. I didn't feel stuck again. And that was years before the podcast actually launched. That's a great minimally viable action.
--:-- So tell us about the role of failure, because everyone's so terrified of failing at this. How do you reframe the way you think about failure to help yourself get unstuck and be successful?
--:-- Adam Alter: Yeah. So very few failures are the be-all and end-all. It's all about framing and how you think about a failure. Very few failures mean you can never do this thing again. Usually they open up other options, opportunities, a second attempt at the same thing. So the first thing is to accept that and to recognize that failure is inevitable. It's going to happen as you get better, as you challenge yourself. But usually that's not irrevocable. It's not the end of the world. You can move forward.
--:-- The other thing is to figure out what to take away from that failure. There are good failures and bad failures. Bad failure is where you fail, you have no idea why, and it doesn't help you move forward and you feel dejected. Good failure is saying, "I've learned something. Here is what I've learned. This part of what I did actually worked quite well. Here is where I got close. Here's where I fell short." It may even be a case of learning through that failure that this is not something you should be doing and you can quit. You can move on to something else. There's nothing wrong with doing that. There are a billion things we could be doing with our time. If failure is teaching you something about what you shouldn't be doing, that's also valuable. So essentially the question that differentiates good failure from bad failure is, "Have I learned what the next thing should be from this failure?" If the answer is yes, then it's good. It helps you. It wasn't a failure at all.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that, Dr. Alter. So I have another question for you. Who should you talk to when you feel stuck?
--:-- Adam Alter: There are essentially three kinds of people that are very useful when you're trying to get unstuck. The first kind are people who are like you, who overlap with you, similar backgrounds, similar ideas. They kind of get where you're coming from. Organizations, when they put teams together, will often do this. They'll knit together people who are similar.
--:-- The second kind of person is someone who is completely different or non-redundant. I see this happen when companies come to NYU to recruit. A lot of the best companies will come in and say, "We don't just want the best finance students. We want the best two finance students, the two marketing students, the two French literature students, the two organic chemistry students," because they'll all have a very different idea about the world. When you put those different ideas together, you get something very useful. When we're often stuck, we consult with people who are like us, and that often further entrenches us. There's something very valuable in going out and speaking to people who are deliberately quite different from you.
--:-- And then the third kind of person is a black sheep, someone who actively pushes back against you. Most of us can think about people in our lives who consistently see things not just differently, but actually in opposition. They push us a little bit to challenge the way we see the world. Pixar has done this for a while. When they have a team of people working on a film, they will bring in a black sheep. They might have a whole lot of people who say, "The most important thing is our animation. That's what sets us apart." But they'll bring in someone who says, "Animation doesn't matter. It's all about narrative. Let's make sure that first scene in the movie is the best narrative we can write, because if you don't grip people early, we're never going to get them."
--:-- So these three kinds of people—everyone should have essentially a brain trust. When you feel like you're stuck, you go to the people who get you. They really know you. They are a lot like you. You go to the people who are a bit different. They have different backgrounds and ideas. And then you go to the people who really push back on you. You are much more likely to succeed in making progress with the influence of those three kinds of people.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If I were to translate that to the personal life, it makes perfect sense if you're trying to have a creative breakthrough or a breakthrough in your business. If you were to translate that to the personal life, I'm sitting here thinking, "Okay, I got my high school friends and they're kind of like me. I got maybe the college friends or the work friends. There's some diversity there in terms of how people think and problem-solving backgrounds. And then I got to find that one outlier that just looks at life differently to bounce this off of."
--:-- If the person listening were to just do one thing, what is the most important thing that you want them to remember and put into action from this conversation, Dr. Alter?
--:-- Adam Alter: There are two things that you could do, two ways of approaching a sticking point. The first one is called exploration, where you try different things. The second one is exploitation, where you drill really deep into one thing. You cannot do both at the same time. You can't both be exploring all your options and really doing as much as you can to make one particular option work for you. Figure out which stage you're in and then bounce between the two. So try different things, figure out which one is best, drill down on that until you hit a wall, and then go back to exploring again. Bounce between those two phases and you will effectively get unstuck.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here.
--:-- Adam Alter: Thank you for having me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I also want to thank you for listening today and for sharing this with people that you love. What a waste it would be to go through your life and not tap into the potential inside of you. I know that based on what you learned today, you have a roadmap to help you do that. So I hope you take everything that you learned and you put it into action.
--:-- One more thing. In case no one else tells you today, let me be the one to say: I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to change your life. Now you don't have any excuses because you have the three simple steps based on the research to plant a signal out into the future and wake up every day and start chipping away at it. So go do it. Five, four, three, two, one. I'll talk to you in a few days.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The heavy. Dr. Alter, here we go. You're even pronouncing it. See, I'm thinking "Alter."
--:-- Adam Alter: An hour later and it's easy. It's just "Alter."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I think it's good that I had that authentic fuck-up.
--:-- Adam Alter: You know what? It's like Harvard Yard. Just say Harvard Yard.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Alter. Alter. It's just a Boston accent.
--:-- Adam Alter: Okay, gotcha.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Excuse me. Oh, I love these chairs. Lynn's going to probably tape a blanket to the back of that thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. No, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language that the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
