--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited you're here because today you and I are going to dig into a topic that has been on your mind. This topic is stressing you out, and I know this because you've been flooding the inbox at melrobbins.com telling me that you feel like you're behind in life, as if there's some sort of invisible checklist that you're supposed to complete by a certain age.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, if you're in your 20s, you're writing me saying, "I'm behind. I don't know what I want to do with my life." Or those of you in your 30s, you feel this pressure that by now you should have kids. You should have found the one. You should be buying a house. And I so relate to the feeling that you can have in your 40s, 50s, and 60s that you've really screwed up your career. You didn't save enough money or you got a divorce. You've made so many mistakes and now it's too late. It's even stressing you out if you're in your 70s and 80s, this sense that there's some perfect way you're supposed to go through life. These boxes that you're supposed to be checking in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, your 50s.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So today, I am so excited to talk to you about this because I have so much research to share with you. And this is research that is going to give you so much freedom and power. Hear me loud and clear. Being a 20-year-old today is not the same experience as it was even five years ago. Being 60 years old today, not the same experience as it was even just five or 10 years ago. And the expectations that society has, that your friends have, that your family have about where you're supposed to be, they're wrong.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Today's conversation is going to blow your mind. It's going to liberate you from the stupid social pressure that you feel. The facts that I'm going to share, the simple mindset reframes that I want you and everyone that you love to adopt based on the decade that you're in right now. The mindset that you need for your 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s and beyond. This is a mindset that is going to set you free and help you take control of where you are in your life right now.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Before we dive in, I want you to know you got to stick around until a bonus segment after the bloopers. It's all about reframing, refocusing, and reprioritizing so you can actually reach your goals in 2025. And it's all thanks to our friends at Walmart Plus, the membership that makes life easier by saving you time and money with free delivery and so much more. I will see you after the bloopers, and you're going to love this bonus segment.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I'm absolutely thrilled that you're here. I am thrilled that you're here because, first of all, it's always such an honor to spend time with you, to be together. But I'm also thrilled because the topic today is fantastic. It is so interesting. I'm so excited to share everything that I want to share with you today.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I also want to say if you're a new listener, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I'm thrilled that you're here today. And because you made the time to hit play and listen to this particular episode, the title of which is "If You're Feeling Behind in Life." First of all, you're the type of person who does value your time. And you also want to make sure that your experience of where you are in your life right now, you want it to be different and you deserve to be enjoying your life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: After today's conversation, let me tell you something. In particular, when you hear the research that I have uncovered, when you hear the strategies that I'm going to share with you based on the age that you are right now, you are going to feel different in your life. How you see where you are right now based on your age, it's going to be different. Because the fact is, you're not behind. You're not late. You are in the exact same boat as almost every other human being on the planet right now who has this sense that they're behind in life, that there's some sort of checklist that you're supposed to be checking off in your 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s and beyond.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And that if you're not checking off these things on the list that, "Oh, I should be doing this by then, I should be engaged, I should be having kids, I should be buying a house, I should be doing this," that if you're not checking these things off, that you're losing in life, that you're behind, that somehow you're the only person on the planet that hasn't figured this out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The reason why I know that you're struggling with this is, first of all, this is a universal experience in life. I have felt this in my life. My kids who are in their 20s have felt this in their life. My husband has felt this at various ages. But more importantly, I'm seeing your messages that are flooding into the inbox at melrobbins.com. I'm seeing what you're writing in the comments on social media and the number of you who are writing in right now. And you may be thinking, "Wait, Mel's reading my comments?" Of course I'm reading your comments. Of course I'm reading your inbox.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's kind of startling the number of you that are writing in saying, "I just feel lost. I feel behind in my life." And I so relate to that sentiment, but I didn't realize how many of you are feeling this right now. So I'm like, we gotta dig into this and we gotta not just kind of talk about it as a thematic thing. Let's do the research. Let's find the experts. Let's figure out what this sense of being behind in your life actually is.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This is such a common experience in life. It's so common, in fact, that there's a word for it. It's called the social clock. That is the technical name based on research for this sense that there's some invisible checklist that you're supposed to mark your success in life by. And the research is incredible, and it's going to completely transform how you feel about where you are in life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So let's talk about this concept of social clock. Once I unpack that and how it creates pressure and expectations that are just simply unfair and not accurate for where the world is at right now, once you see this, and then we go decade by decade, you're going to be liberated by how you're going to look at your life and yourself differently.
--:-- Mel Robbins: In the 1960s, there was a psychologist by the name of Bernice Neugarten, and she found that every single society has this invisible checklist for life milestones. You got to graduate from college by 22. You got to be married by 30. You got to have kids by 35. You're going to have your midlife crisis when you turn 50. You got to retire by 65.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's an interesting note about 65 and retiring. Where do these numbers come from? Like, why do we all think we're supposed to do certain things by a certain time? Well, they come from societal norms. And what you're about to discover, this blew my mind when I dug into the research, is so many of the societal norms were determined like 50 to 100 years ago when life was different. In fact, life expectancy was completely different.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So that kind of general notion that you should retire at the age of 65, check this out. You want to know when that became, quote, the social clock or the invisible checklist? 1935. 1935 was when the Social Security Act happened and it created this moment in time at the age of 65 where social security was a thing. That's when you were supposed to retire. And we all were just like, "Okay." And then we set the social clock at 65 and then we all live our lives as if we're supposed to retire at 65. Says who? I guess everybody since 1935. Isn't that kind of dumb that we have this stupid age where we're supposed to do something by?
--:-- Mel Robbins: My son Oakley, I'm thinking about something else. My son Oakley, he had a lot of challenges going through school. He bounced from public elementary school to a school for kids with language-based learning disabilities because of dyslexia. Then he had to go to another smaller school because that school stopped at the age of eighth grade and he had to repeat a grade. So now he's ending his freshman year of college and he just turned 20. And he's like, "I feel weird because I'm older. Aren't you supposed to be like 18 when you're a freshman?" Says who? I guess we did. That's what this concept of social clock is.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you follow the clock and you're a freshman at 18 and not 20, you're, quote, on time. But if you're not following the clock and you retire at 75, you're off time. If you haven't had kids by the time you're 30, if you haven't met the one by the time you're in your late 20s, that you're off time, you're falling behind. That's where the sense that you're falling behind comes from. It's these weird societal norms that we set way back when for when somebody is supposed to be doing something.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What I'm going to prove to you today is that the timeline that is in place that your parents live by, that your grandparents live by, that your friends are all following, that you are feeling all this pressure around, it's completely made up. And it was also made up when life was totally different. I mean, wait till I just unpack all this for you. It's crazy when you hear this.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to bring in another researcher that I absolutely love. This is research from Dr. Robert Waldinger's book, *The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study on Happiness*. Dr. Robert Waldinger, he has been on this podcast. He's absolutely fantastic. He is a professor at Harvard Medical School. He is also the fourth director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is the longest study that has ever been done on what it means to live a happy and meaningful life. This has been in existence for 86 years. And the data is very conclusive.
--:-- Mel Robbins: He actually writes about this idea of a social clock and how it screws us all up. It makes us unhappy. It makes us feel like we're falling behind or we're losing in life. So Dr. Waldinger takes Bernice Neugarten's research about this social clock even a step further, because he says it's not just society and things like "we got to retire at 65" or "we got to graduate by the time we're 18" that put pressure on us. But there's also social clocks that you may feel based on your upbringing or based on influences like your friends or news or social media or movies. They create this sense that, "Oh my gosh, okay, that's what other people are doing right now. So that's what I need to be doing right now."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Whether it's, "Oh, my friends are now all leaving big cities and moving out to where the mountains are and maybe I need to be doing that." Or, "Oh my gosh, my best friend just got engaged and I'm still single. Maybe I need to be doing that right now." And they also differ from culture to culture, generation to generation, which we're about to get into. Like when I unfold how different life was one or two human beings ago and how we still live by some of the same social clocks as people had 50 years ago, you're going to think to yourself, "This is ridiculous. Why am I doing this to myself?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Waldinger writes about the fact that there are these key events in everybody's life, like when do you leave a childhood home? When are you going to enter into a committed long-term relationship? Are you having kids? And if so, at what age? When are you buying a house? That these can also have a cultural value based on where you were raised, based on where you grew up, based on your religion, based on your grandparents and your parents' personal history. That is what creates the sense that you're off time because you're not, quote, on time based on your parents' expectations or based on what your friends are doing or based on what is sort of valued in the culture that you grew up in.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This is where it gets really important and interesting to me. It's not that being off time is stressful in and of itself. What makes it stressful is the fact that you don't think you're meeting the expectations that society or your parents or your friends have for you. That's what makes this so challenging. The sense of falling behind is based on falling behind to whom? Falling behind based on what? Falling behind based on whose expectations? That's what's at the heart of this.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's why I think this is so commonplace in terms of an experience that you're feeling right now. There is this crazy expectation that society has for where you're supposed to be in your life based on your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and you've just adopted it. When is the exact age that you should go to nursing school? When is the time limit for when you could apply to go back to school? Where's the time limit to you reinventing your career? Where's the time limit for where you can no longer get good with money? There isn't one. And that's why this whole notion that you're behind in life is a freaking joke. And it's time to stop playing into it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: At the beginning of the 1800s, can you guess what the average life expectancy was here in the United States? So it's the 1800s. What do you think the average life expectancy is? Just take a guess. 29 years old. 29 years old? Of course you're getting married at the age of 20. I mean, you're almost dead for crying out loud. You got to hurry up. But that's not your life today. No wonder people were trying to get it all done. Because if your average life expectancy is 29, you got to hurry up. Every second counts for crying out loud.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Think about your grandparents. Life in the 50s was completely different. Have you ever turned on a movie from the 50s? It looks like a different planet from the cars to the clothes, to the way the saturation of the film looks, to the social norms. And so the reason why your grandparents and sometimes even your parents don't understand what you're doing in your 20s is because they literally lived in a different reality. Their friends were dying in their 50s. That's why they hurried up and had certain expectations about things.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You live in a completely different moment of time, which means you have to have completely different expectations for yourself and what's possible. And a lot of those expectations that need to change about where you're supposed to be in your life are so exciting and so full of possibility. And this stupid social clock and this checklist from the 1950s, "Oh, I got to be this by this. I got to figure it out by my 20s. I got to be married by this certain time." It's so dumb because that's not the world you live in.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's not only dumb, it can make you miserable because you may be making a major life decision right now because of approval, not based on what's gonna make you happy. You may be torturing yourself, telling yourself that you have to have everything figured out right now in your 20s or your 30s or that it's too late to reinvent yourself because of the mistakes that you've made and now you're in your 50s. Complete BS, it's not the truth and yet you're making yourself miserable because of these stupid checklists that we're all adhering to. The pressure to be, quote, on time in life isn't the truth, it's social conditioning. And it ends today.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So let's start with our 20s and the lies you're telling yourself and the lies that the social clock has been telling you. When I share with you the reality of what it's like to be in your 20s today, I think you're going to feel very validated. If you're listening right now and you're not in your 20s, but you have somebody in your life who is, this is going to be so eye-opening because being in your 20s right now is a very different experience than being in your 20s even five years ago. The amount of change that has happened when it comes to careers, when it comes to the cost of living, when it comes to the way that people work now, is mesmerizing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The expectation that you should, quote, have it figured out in your 20s is not only a joke, it's dangerous. As you hear me share the reality of what you're facing in your 20s and why the 20s is not when you're supposed to figure your life out. No, if you're feeling lost in your 20s, you're doing your 20s correctly. Because your 20s is not the decade of figuring things out, especially in your career. The 20s is a decade of possibility. That's what the 20s are.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to read to you a message from Mimi, who is a listener of this podcast, and she wrote in to melrobbins.com. "Hey, Mel, I'm 25, lost, jobless, and I regret the degree I spent four years on. It feels too late to pursue something meaningful like med or law school. How do I break out of this rut and stop comparing myself to those who had a clear path from a young age."
--:-- Mel Robbins: First of all, this notion that you're too late to apply to med school is a lie. You can apply to med school at the age of 80. There is no age limit for applying to medical school. Even if you didn't do a pre-med major, you can do a post-bac pre-med program and then apply to law school. There are people right now that are listening around the world that applied to law school in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. So stop putting that pressure on yourself that there was some time that you were supposed to do it, and now you're, quote, late. No, you're not. You're figuring your life out. Your 20s is a time that is full of possibility.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Before I talk about how I want you to reframe your mindset to possibility and really embrace that in your 20s, I don't want you to have things figured out. In your 20s, I want you to be exploring and figuring out who you are and what you like. If by the age of 25, you have woken up and realized, "Oh my gosh, I really do feel this call to become a doctor." Great. Go explore. Great. Check out the possibility.
--:-- Mel Robbins: For those of you who are listening, who are not in your 20s, I really need you to understand something. Being a 20-year-old today is not the experience that you had in your 20s. The statistics that I'm about to read to you are so sobering. It's important for all of us, whether you're the parent or the aunt or the uncle of a 20-something or whether you're the older brother or sister of a 20-something, or if you're a 20-something and you're beating yourself up or you're thinking you got to have it all figured out, I really want you to hear this because it's going to validate this sense of feeling lost.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The average 20-year-old today is under so much stress and pressure and chaos right now, and it's not pressure and stress and chaos that existed five or six years ago. It's just changed. We sit here and we look at 20-somethings and we're like, "Oh, they're weak or addicted to social media or all anxious or this or the other thing." Have you stopped to consider what it's like to be a 20-something today?
--:-- Mel Robbins: First of all, five or six years ago, you went into an office, work was very predictable. You kind of knew what it was going to look like when you graduated from high school or college and you started like going into a company and commuting. That's not what work is today. Nothing is stable. It's all hybrid. It's 24-7. In fact, Dell did some research. Did you know that 85% of jobs that are gonna be around in the next 10 years haven't been created yet? Homeownership is out of reach. The generational wealth gap is absolutely massive. Nearly 10 million people right now are falling behind in their student loans. That's $250 billion worth of debt that is past due. The world is in chaos.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Most 20-somethings have parents that lived in a very predictable, stable economy. They went to a corporate job. They reported to the office. They had a network of friends at work. That's not the typical 20-year-old experience. They're now in the middle of a recession and hybrid work. The world is shifting. The landscape is shifting. People are all over the place and scattered. Nothing is as it was even six years ago. It's time to wake up and recognize that if you feel lost, I'm not surprised. I would too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: In fact, I felt lost in my 20s because I didn't know what I wanted to do yet. I bounced from one thing to the other. And I wasn't dealing with half the stuff that you're dealing with. Not going into work consistently, not having like a really core group of friends at work, not feeling like there's something that you can count on in terms of predictability, not quite knowing what industry to go into because AI is here and things are changing. This is exactly how you should feel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you're feeling lost right now, if you have not figured out your career, good. You're doing your 20s correctly. There's nothing wrong with you. It's a perfectly normal response to the decade that you're in based on the moment in history that you're in. For those of us that have 20-somethings that we want to support, I think showing up with a bit more compassion based on the facts on how difficult this is to navigate, and none of us have experience with this, so we can't exactly help them based on our own life experience because we're in the middle of this too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Feeling lost is to be expected, which is why shifting your mindset from this ridiculous social clock expectation that you should have it all figured out yet to shifting your mind to, "Oh, I'm basically in a decade of possibility. I'm not supposed to have it figured out. I'm supposed to be exploring." One thing that you do have on your side that I want to point out is that because you're digitally native and because all of the jobs that are coming are going to have to do with being online and technology and AI, one of the best things that you can do is double down on learning AI, on leaning into tech, on embracing the fact that it is a skill to be digitally native. It is a skill to be able to communicate the way that you do. This is not a deficit. It's an asset. Embracing that because it's going to be a part of any single career path that you choose.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But hear me loud and clear. Get rid of the checklist that you have to have your career figured out in your 20s. In fact, think about your friend Mel Robbins. In my 20s, I had approximately 11 job changes. I graduated from law school. I hated law school. I then went and was a public defender. I liked that job. I did that for a couple of years. Then I bounced to a large law firm, hated that job. Then I quit that job after a year. Then I went not to one startup, not to two startups. I went to three startups in three years. Then I studied to be a life coach. Then I invested in a little tiny paint your own pottery business. Then I tried a little radio. Like I bounced from one thing to the other. So the idea that you're supposed to have it figured out, complete garbage.
--:-- Mel Robbins: In fact, you may be the kind of person like me that actually needs to explore and you need to bounce from one thing to another to figure out what you like because it's how something feels that tells you whether you like it or not. Every one of the things that you're going to try in your 20s brings experience, experience that you're going to build on, skills that you're going to build. Embracing this idea that "I don't have to figure it all out. I'm exploring. This is a decade of possibility. I'm going to embrace it."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Have you ever shown up at a beach on a wave day? Aren't wave days the best? The big rollers come in, and you grab the boogie board, and you jump in the waves, and you ride them up and down. That's what I think the 20s are. Figuring out what you like, learning how to ride the waves. That's what you're going to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Look, I want to acknowledge something. It's easy for me to sit here and say, "Oh, it's a decade of possibility. You're going to figure it all out." I understand that there are going to be moments in your 20s where you do feel desperate. In fact, there are going to be moments in every decade of your life where you're going to think like you've made a major mistake. You're going to feel like you're not quite sure if you can go on.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I can really relate to this feeling because our daughter Sawyer, who is now 26 years old, she's the exact opposite of me in terms of how she goes about her life, how she thinks, and she just like has everything all mapped out, okay? Gonna go to high school, then I'm gonna go to college. During college, she got herself an internship at this huge cybersecurity firm. During the internship, she gets herself the offer to get the job. After college, the pandemic hits, a lot of plans go sideways. In three years of working for this massive cybersecurity firm, never went into work. Three years, never went into work. Even though she loved her boss, even though she was engaged in her work, she hated never going into work. She never left her apartment. She would literally sit in Southie in Boston and work all day.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you're in your 20s, that may be your experience. Hybrid work has done a number of things. Yes, it's wonderful to have the flexibility, but it has imploded people's networks at work. It has imploded a sense of structure and rhythm to your day. It has destroyed the separation between your home space and your workspace, which is why people feel lonely and isolated. And that's what she started to feel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: She saved her money and she went on this lifelong dream to go on a four-month-long solo backpacking trip. That was a highlight of her life, something she had been planning for seven years. She quits her job. One of the reasons why she didn't want to quit her job is because, check this out, she was worried about what future employers would think and what it would look like on her resume. Why? Because of the social clock, because of this expectation. The checklist in my 20s: "I got to make sure that I stay at a job for a certain amount of time, that I stay in an industry for a certain amount of time, that I don't quit too soon, or I don't stay too long so that it looks a certain way to other people." This is all the same thing. Not wanting to look behind to other people, not wanting to look bad to other people based on what the expectations are of other people and society.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Thankfully, she finally decided, "I'm gonna go on this trip." She spends four months solo backpacking. Great, because in your 20s, decade of possibility. You don't have kids. You don't have obligations. You don't have the massive amount of things that pile up in your life when you're in your 30s, 40s, and 50s. That's the time to do it. That's the time to move to a different city. That's the time to explore new things. That's the time to jump from one thing to the other because it is the decade of possibility.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But then she came home completely broke and having no idea what to do with her life. If you don't have somebody in your life who is lost or feels behind, I want to play a little selfie video for you that she took of herself in her bedroom upstairs while she was living here at home with her parents at the age of 25, feeling broke and lost and not knowing what to do with her life. This is what it feels like to be behind in your 20s.
--:-- Sawyer Robbins: [Audio clip plays] Hey, I can't stop crying. My face is so puffy. And it's all because I have no fucking idea what I'm doing. I want to make a lot of money, as everyone does, but as a 25 year old coming home from an extraordinary trip and thinking I'm going to make so much money off the bat, I'm not. And I also haven't done anything to make money either. No! I'm dying. I feel like there's a million things to do and I can't do anything. My to-do list feels like so long. But on my to-do list is like, call so-and-so. Catch up with blank. Stop crying. Oh, my God. Oh, God. I will be okay.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And yes, you will be okay. And yes, you're going to figure it out. And you don't have to figure it out today. And you don't have to figure it out next week. All you got to do is keep telling yourself, "I'm going to figure this out. I'm capable of putting one foot in front of the other. I am capable of networking with people. I am capable of landing a job and feeling it out. I'm capable of leaving a job if I don't like it. I'm capable of moving to another city. I'm capable of saving money."
--:-- Mel Robbins: The decade of your 20s is not where you're supposed to figure it out. It's the decade of possibility where you have so many experiences because you're figuring out who you are and what you like. None of that can be distilled down into a checklist. So instead of trying to check the boxes, I want you to take a step back. I want you to see that the 20s right now are really different, that it is challenging. It is overwhelming. It is confusing. And so feeling that way is normal.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The best thing that you can do is to remind yourself that you don't need to figure it out. Nobody has it figured out. But step-by-step, day-by-day, you have to remind yourself that you have the ability to explore, to make changes, to learn about yourself. If you do that, I promise you, you are going to wake up at the end of your 20s and go, "Not only am I doing okay, but I've learned a lot about myself." And you're also doing better than you think you are.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you're listening right now and there's a 20-something in your life, that's exactly what you need to say to them. You are going to figure this out. Your 20s are very hard. This hybrid work thing is so confusing. Trying to network with people that don't even show up to an office, it is really difficult. You're right. And guess what?
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're still gonna figure it out. And I'm gonna be here every step of the way to support you in doing it. So stop putting the pressure on yourself, take a breath, go for a walk, and then take the next right step. That's what we need to be saying to the 20-somethings in our life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So if you're 20, it's the decade of possibility. Now let's talk about your 30s, because the biggest lie that the social clock in this invisible checklist is telling you is that you're supposed to, quote, settle down. You gotta meet the one, you gotta have kids, you gotta find the house and settle down and move to the burbs. That is not what you have to do. If that's what you wanna do, fine, but that's not what you have to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This checklist was created—let's remind ourselves—this checklist was created based on a time when the average life expectancy was in the 50s. This is your grandparents' checklist. And so it doesn't have to be yours. You do not live in the same moment of history that your grandparents or your parents did. And it's time to understand the reality so you can stop pressuring yourself to meet all these expectations. You're going to love this research.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Do not go anywhere. We're going to take a short break so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. Please share this. I think this is one of those conversations that every family should listen to because it really sets the record straight on what modern life is for real, the pressures that you're facing, the expectations that we put on each other at every age. Share this with your family in particular. Share it with your friends. I can't wait to hear about the conversations that you have in light of listening to this episode together. And don't go anywhere. We are going into the 30s and the 40s and beyond when we return. So stay with me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your buddy, Mel Robbins. I'm so excited that you're here with me. We're talking about this feeling of being behind in life. It is so common right now. You are flooding the inbox at melrobbins.com slash podcast with messages about how you're struggling. You feel behind in your career. You feel like you should have figured out things by now. You're struggling with the ability to buy a house because it's so out of reach.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm thrilled that you're listening to this. I know that the conversation today is gonna be life-changing and empowering. I also know that it's going to create a deeper connection and understanding and level of support between you and members of your family and your friends. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing this with people in your life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: We've already covered the 20s and how the decade of being 20 and the experience of being 20 right now is completely different than what it was like even just five years ago. Your 30s is a decade where you've told yourself this lie that you have to settle down. Like this is the decade where you've got to find the one. You have to have your kids. You have to buy a house. And while those are amazing things to do in your life, if those are things that you want to do, the pressure that you feel is complete BS.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There seem to be two major items on the checklist that people hold themselves accountable to in their 30s: the house that you need to buy, and the marriage and the kids that you need to have. I'm gonna unpack them both one by one. I've been getting a lot of messages from people recently, and I want to read one from a listener named Shauna.
--:-- Mel Robbins: She writes, "Mel, I recently turned 35. I've been somewhat single for five years, and I have a big wish to be a mom. I've always loved and wanted children, taking care of kids is second nature to me, but as the months roll by, and as I've matched my thousandth match on all the dating apps that I've been on for four years, I'm hitting a wall of despair. My life is not budging. The apps aren't appin'. Meeting people in real life is not a thing anymore, as no one ever talks to me when I go out. I don't have eligible single friends, nor are there friends of friends left. I can't be the only woman in this situation, and I don't know how to go on living like this."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, first of all, yes, you do. You do know how to go on living. You're gonna go on living. And based on what I'm gonna unpack for you, I'm gonna give you a sense of power and freedom that I want you to really embrace in your 30s, because what you're feeling is extraordinarily common. There is a big difference between the topic of having children and the reality that I need you to take seriously versus the pressure that you feel to do it by a certain time and the pressure that people also feel during this decade to find the one, to get married, to buy the house.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So let's talk about the pressure to have kids because I wanna be extremely responsible about that. The decade of your 30s is not the decade when you're supposed to settle down. The decade of your 30s, in my opinion, is where you need to dig into the research and settle in on what matters to you. This is particularly true when it comes to kids. Just because you haven't gotten pregnant yet, you haven't met the one yet, you're not a mom yet, doesn't mean you're not going to be one.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But when it comes to the topic of having kids, it is critical in your 30s that you be honest with yourself about what you actually want. Because for women in particular, there is a biological deadline if you want to have your own biological children. So let's take fertility, for example. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say that a woman's best chance at getting pregnant is in her late teens to her late 20s, and fertility does start to decline around 30 and starts to drop off more significantly around 35.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what does that mean for you? That means that you don't need to settle down, but you need to be honest with yourself about what you want. And you've already done that part. You wanna be a mom. You'd love to have children of your own. Great. If you're 35, that means you need to freeze your eggs. Do not gaslight yourself. Do not hold out on this. Follow the research and the medical facts and set yourself up to be able to make a decision in the future. Yes, the biological clock is a very real thing, which is why I want you to understand there are very real options that you have to make sure you don't miss the window.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Just because it feels like, "Oh my God, I'm 35 and there's this checklist and there's a social clock and the door is closing," it doesn't mean your life is. It doesn't mean the options are closing. And you will feel so empowered if you take the step to freeze your eggs, which is what I would recommend that you do if this is something that you're serious about.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's another thing that I would get serious about. If you're in a relationship right now and you know you want kids and your partner's like, "Eh, I don't know if I want kids or not," do not waste this decade with somebody who does not want the same things that you want. Do not tell yourself that the person is gonna change your mind. Because if you continue to stay in a relationship with somebody who does not share the same vision for life, who does not have the same values for what you want on something as important as whether or not you're gonna have kids, do not do that to yourself. You will waste the rest of this decade with a person that you hope changes their mind, and then the door will be closed and you're going to regret this for the rest of your life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You gotta be very serious. Again, this is not where you settle down and you settle when it comes to your values and your vision for your life. Your 30s is where you get honest with yourself about some core things.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But now I wanna talk to you if you're in a situation where you're like, "Okay, I get it and I still wanna find the love of my life." I want that for you. And you are going to find the love of your life. Here's what I want to say about that though. I wrote about this a lot and researched this in *The Let Them Theory*. I think there's some important research if you, quote, haven't met the one. You've dated a lot of people or you've been in a bunch of relationships and it hasn't turned into a long-term committed relationship. There's very interesting research around this that you need to dig into.
--:-- Mel Robbins: On page 252 of *The Let Them Theory* book, I also address this fallacy that the purpose of dating is to find the one. I think this is a reason why dating is so hard: you don't understand the true purpose. You're not just trying to find the one. Dating is helping you learn more about yourself and what you want and what you don't want. The Let Them Theory is going to be super important for you because you got to let people show you who they are, and you got to focus on what you actually want to feel and the type of person that you want to be with. The more time you spend chasing the wrong people, the longer it's going to take you to find the right one.
--:-- Mel Robbins: One of the most important lessons that you're going to learn is the kind of behavior that you will not accept, the kind of person you truly want to be with. If you get so obsessed with finding the one and you feel so much pressure because of the stupid social clock as to when you're supposed to be in a committed long-term relationship, you're going to miss all of the information and the lessons that dating is trying to teach you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You weren't put on the earth to be somebody's wife or husband. You are here to fulfill your dreams, share your story, and create a big, beautiful, amazing life. No one else is going to create that life for you. The person you choose to love gets to share that life with you. That's why you got to be choosy. When you're dating, have a lot of fun, but don't ever forget the bigger picture. You're looking for someone who is capable of helping you become your best self and co-creating a beautiful life together.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's important to understand that you're learning more about yourself. Here's what I want you to do. It's easy to close yourself off. If you focus on the social clock and "I should have been finding the person by now, I'm 35, it's too late," if you start doing that, you get pickier. That's an interesting thing. You get pickier because you're looking for a needle in the haystack. That's not actually how you meet somebody that amplifies you. You actually have to do the opposite. You have to become more flexible. You have to be willing to be less choosy and meet more people. You got to be more open to lots of different types of people.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Ultimately, the more people that you meet, the more you open yourself up to people of different heights, of different backgrounds, of different body types, of different professions, it will lead you to choosing someone amazing who makes you feel incredible, who chooses you back. I get it. It's kind of hard to embrace this idea that you've got to be more open, but I promise you when you realize that it's your own insecurity and desperation around this that's narrowing the field, you got to do the opposite and open yourself up to new experiences and new people. Change the filters, as everybody says. Change the filters, change the height filter, change the mileage filter. Open yourself up. I promise you the love of your life is just around the corner. In fact, if you knew that the love of your life were right around the corner, how would you be living your life differently now? There you go.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right, let's talk about the third big thing that is one of these milestones on the checklist in your 30s: "I got to buy a house. I got to buy a house. I got to have my first house. I got to have a house. I got to buy a house." I want to share, if you're in your 30s or heck, 40s or 50s, and you're wanting to buy a home and you're somewhere in the world where you feel like it feels out of reach, like when did real estate become so expensive? You're not wrong. Real estate is just—shocking's the wrong word—it's unfair, in my opinion, what's happened.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I wanna share some research with you because it's different. I'm sorry, it's different than the situation that your parents and grandparents were in when they were buying their first home. The American dream in particular is now like the American nightmare. A lot of experts say that the vehicle that was the primary vehicle where people could establish wealth, which is buying a home, is not accessible to a lot of people anymore. Let me just hit you with some of the facts. You ready?
--:-- Mel Robbins: In 1950, the average cost of a home—so we're talking the house that your grandparents or your parents bought—you ready? You want to buy a house, the median price: $7,300. Some of you may be paying that in rent every two or three months. I think you could afford a house at $7,300. But if we were to convert that in today's dollars, what would the actual cost be adjusted for inflation? If we were looking at apples to apples, adjusted for today's dollars, that would be $88,000. That means there's an 11x increase between what your grandparents were paying and what you now need to pay. What does that mean? Different world, different reality, which means you've got to have different expectations.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There's a reason why this has happened. Check this out. In 1991, the average home buyer was 35 years old. Today, the average home buyer is 56 years old. If you live in a world where the average home buyer is 56 years old, why on earth would you tell yourself you have to have a house by the age of 30? Why are you putting so much pressure on yourself to do this?
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you're wondering, "Wow, it just seems like rents and housing costs have gone up significantly in the last couple of years," it has. In the last three years, the housing market in Boston has gone up 73%. You're not imagining this. This is the reality. I'm sure you've even seen this in your own neighborhood. The world has changed, which means you got to change the expectations and the pressure that you put on yourself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: First of all, hybrid work coming out of the pandemic just imploded everything. One of the things that it impacted is real estate costs because people that were living in big cities could move to smaller markets, which meant all of a sudden there was this huge bubble everywhere, even in places where normally it would cost way less to buy a house. Another reason—a lot of people don't talk about this, but it's true—all of those supposed federal grants that were supposed to go to payroll and to helping businesses stay open, you know what a lot of people did with that money? They invested in real estate. So did private equity. That's why you've got situations where there's no rental stock, why it's impossible to buy a house.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm not saying this to make you depressed. I'm saying it because how are you possibly going to settle down if you're not accepting where the world is right now? Here's what I want you to do. If buying your own home is an important core value to you, fantastic. I personally believe that you can figure out how to do it, and you can figure out how to do it in a great place. You can find a house and you can buy a house and you can fix up a house. If that's your dream, wonderful. But I want you to stop holding this checklist or this social clock over your head. I want you to embrace reality that things have changed. The real estate market is different.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want you to do your research, just like I'm asking you to do the research around kids. Do the research. Embrace the fact that this is not something that has a timeline. It's a dream that you own, and there are things that you can do to set yourself up for it. It might take you four or five years to save the money to get a house. It might take you researching going to auction on houses, going to foreclosure. You might decide when you do the research, "Hey, you know what I've realized? I actually want to rent where I am, but maybe what I'm going to do is I'm going to look into buying a small little unit that I can rent that's in a place that I want to move to in five years."
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm going to think about this differently because I live in a different moment in time. If I really double down on what I want, and then I start getting smart and doing the research about how to work with what I've got and to embrace the reality of the decade I'm living in and the moment in history that I'm in and the place that the market's in and finances are in, I can figure this out. If I loosen my timeline and I give myself some grace, I'm gonna feel motivated to do it. I might just do this in a way that's super cool. I'm gonna rent a house. I'm going to get an investment place. I'm going to learn how to make money on the side. And then guess what? When I move up there in about five to 10 years, I'm going to have paid off a lot of that mortgage. I'm going to be sitting really pretty. In fact, I not only now have a house, I did it in a way that was even smarter than what my parents and grandparents did.
--:-- Mel Robbins: For those of us that are not in our 30s, really understanding that the landscape is different, understanding that housing prices are exorbitant, and level setting your expectations is important because then you're not adding undue and unnecessary pressure on yourself, which is only gonna make you feel lost and depressed. And now you don't have to because you can figure it out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So let's go to our 40s. The poster child for how to take control of your life in your 40s when you think you screwed everything up is your friend Mel Robbins. I have so much to share with you about this. The 40s were the best decade of my life. Well, actually, the 50s are pretty good too, but the 40s is where—holy cow—I went from rock bottom to climbing the mountain, and you can too. We're going to hear a few words from our amazing sponsors, and don't go anywhere. We're going into the 40s when we return, so stay with me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your buddy, Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are talking about this concept of feeling behind in your life, unpacking research around the pressure of following the social clock and expectations of other people and societal norms. We've already covered your 20s and your 30s. I'm thrilled that you're here. I'm thrilled that you're sharing this with people that you care about. And I'm also thrilled to talk about our 40s because I think the 40s were one of the hardest decades of my life, but it ended being one of the best. And it can be one of your best decades too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The lie that people tell themselves about their 40s is that if you haven't made it yet, then you're never going to. It's complete baloney. In fact, this was my story. At the age of 41, my husband's restaurant business was failing. I had been laid off from this job that I thought was gonna be my ticket. And I felt like I had made every single bad decision in my career. I told you earlier about the number of career changes that I'd had in my 20s. I kept bouncing from one thing to the other in my 30s. I'm talking another seven different pivots.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So here I am, 41. I'm about 14 jobs in in my career. It didn't look like a resume. It looked like a choose-your-own-disaster adventure. And now I'm feeling at the age of 41, I've completely blown it. I've blown it. And not only have I blown it in my career, I don't have any money. We've invested everything in my husband's restaurant business. That's now failing. So you want to talk about that sense that you're not only behind, but that you've royally screwed it all up. I thought, "There's no way I'm getting out of debt. There's no way I'm getting the liens off the house. There's no way I'm going to be able to pay for my kid's college. There's no way I'm ever going to be successful in my career." That's how I felt at the age of 41. I wasn't just behind. I effed the whole thing up.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm here to tell you that you're just getting started when you hit your 40s. One of the best things about being in your 40s is that even if your career or your financial life is a complete train wreck like mine was, you still are not starting from scratch. That's the coolest thing. Every single thing that you've done up until this point is actually building experience, experience that you can build on. You're not too late. In fact, if you look at the life expectancy of 77, you've got 37 more years. Do you know how much you can get done in 37 years?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's the thing I want you to really think about. If you're going to hold yourself to a standard that by the age of 40, you should have things figured out, that means that you can kind of figure things out over the next couple of decades. You got plenty of time. Beating yourself up and telling yourself that you're lost and telling yourself that you've screwed up—do you know what that does? It doesn't motivate you. It actually makes you depressed. It makes you feel like a loser, and you're not a loser. You just have a winding path. You are probably just stubborn like I am and you learn lessons the hard way. You explored a lot and now you know a lot. You cannot afford to tell yourself this stupid lie that it's too late, that you're behind, that you've screwed it up, that you can't turn it around because it's complete BS. If I can do it, you can do it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's not just me. Do you know Vera Wang, the famous fashion designer, wedding designer? She started designing wedding dresses at the age of 40. Samuel L. Jackson landed that role in *Pulp Fiction* at 45. Julia Child—do you know how old she was? The famous French chef, Julia Child, when she published her very first cookbook: 49.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's the other thing that you have in your 40s. You have a network of people that you know. You have a number of experiences. You have a lot of lessons that you've learned. And now, you know what you have in your 40s that you didn't have in your 30s? You have a sense of urgency, and you can use that to your advantage. Take everything that's happened in your career to this date and say, "You know what? I'm gonna figure this out in my decade. I'm gonna triple down and I'm gonna go for it."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Your 40s aren't a finish line. Your 40s are the launch pad for the next decade of your life. That's what they are. It's where you can truly launch forward in your career. You can do something new. You can build on what you've learned, the mistakes that you've made. That's why the 40s are incredible.
--:-- Mel Robbins: By the way, the other reason why the 40s is really fun to do is because everybody around you is so distracted—typically raising kids or they're engaged in their career or they're doing other things—that nobody cares what you're doing. So you can do anything that you want. That is super cool. That's true about all the decades, but in the 40s in particular, you're gonna notice people don't care as much, and you're not gonna care as much either.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's another statistic that I wanna give to you. Maybe things haven't worked out because you're supposed to do your own thing. Maybe your 40s is where you take that interest that you had or that side hustle or that thing you've always imagined doing and you actually launch your own thing. Do you know this is research from a study at MIT Sloan School of Business? The average age of a successful startup founder: 45. Kind of cool, huh?
--:-- Mel Robbins: You want to know why the average age is 45? Because you have a certain amount of wisdom and a certain amount of failure and a certain amount of clarity after four decades of your life about who you are and what your strengths are and what you're interested in. And you're also sick of the BS. So you can laser focus in on what you actually want to do. For me, it was my 40s where I got tired of my own excuses and I forced myself to do it. I think that's the invitation that your 40s have for you. If you don't like where you are, then stop listening to your excuses and use this decade to change your life. If you've been sitting around waiting for somebody else to come rescue you, stop gaslighting yourself and take responsibility for creating what you want.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It was my 40s and that rock bottom moment that forced me to discover the strength that I have and the capacity that I have to do the things that needed to be done in order to change my life for the better. Regardless of whether you're successful or you're struggling like I was, you have that exact same ability, and your 40s are your invitation to get honest with yourself and get to work.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right, let's talk about our 50s. The lie you're gonna tell yourself is that when you hit 50, because it's kind of that midpoint in life, you're supposed to have some sort of crisis. No, you're not. It's not the midlife crisis. I actually think your 50s are a moment for fabulous reinvention.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I was 50 years old when I went from being a motivational speaker to starting a media production company and working with companies like JP Morgan, Starbucks, Ulta Beauty, and Audible. I was 54 when I started the Mel Robbins podcast, which as I'm talking to you right now is the number one ranked podcast in the entire world. Number one. As a 56-year-old woman sitting above my garage in Vermont, having never done that before and leaning into all of it. I think that is so freaking cool. It's an example that if you look at your 50s not as "I'm behind, I should have been here," this is where you get to play. This is where reinvention is a thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: For most of us in our 50s, if you've had the kind of life where you've been raising kids or you've been climbing the ladder at work or you've been busy caring for everybody else, this is where you get to think about yourself. That doesn't mean you don't still have to care for kids or care for aging parents or you don't have a demanding career, but what if this were a decade where you stopped lying to yourself and saying it's too late to start over, and you started telling yourself the truth, which is your 50s are the decade of reinvention.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Everybody that I know that's in their 50s is doing something cool right now. If you are listening and you have parents in their 50s, please send this to them. Please remind your parents that they are super cool and there's so many cool things that they could be doing. Everybody that I know in their 50s right now is thinking about this. They're either thinking about it from the standpoint of "What do I wanna do next?" or they're thinking about it from the standpoint of "All right, I've taken care of the kids and everybody else. What do I wanna do? What's the contribution I want to make?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: My husband, I'm so proud of him, Christopher Robbins. For the last five years, when he was in his 50s, he started a men's retreat called Soul Degree. He only does three of them a year. He has also gotten a certificate to be a death doula. He also is working on his first book. I'm so excited about this book. I can't tell you about it. I'm going to have to let him tell you about it when he's finished writing. But he writes every day for an hour. How cool is that? And the man is also getting a master's in spiritual psychology right now. He just applied online and he's doing it remotely. Isn't that so cool? That's available to you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I really feel like thinking about 50s as giving yourself permission to reimagine what's possible. That goes for everything. If you're divorced, you're going to meet the love of your life. If you're married, you want to know the best marriage? It's the second marriage to the first person. That's the best marriage. When you reimagine what's possible with the person that you've been with for the last 20 to 30 years. I feel more connected to Chris now because of what we're doing to improve our relationship in our 50s and being really intentional about how we're showing up and changing old patterns. It's the coolest thing ever.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's not too late. It's actually just the beginning of a whole new chapter of your life, a decade where you can reimagine everything.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I've got this message from Laura where she wrote and said, "Mel, I'm a recent empty nester to twins. So boom, it happened all at once. I have no idea what I want to happen now. I've been a caretaker for my family and now I'm not. I have a small crafting business, but it doesn't really excite me. It just brings me some extra money so I feel like I contribute a little financially. The last 14 years I've volunteered at the schools, but that chapter's closed. I believe I wanted to get involved in some kind of charity, but I'm not sure what, or maybe start something of my own that would benefit my town locally, or maybe leave a legacy. I'm just not sure what direction I should go in."
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know what's cool about this? It's kind of like your 20s. Give yourself permission. You don't have to pick a direction. Explore them all and see what feels right. And you don't have to figure it out by the end of this year. What if you give yourself your 50s to explore all kinds of things?
--:-- Mel Robbins: And that's part of the process of reinventing yourself. And so I want to say a couple things, though, because there was some great research about being in your 50s, and this will also be true as we get into 60s and beyond, from Robert Waldinger, our professor at Harvard Medical School from the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
--:-- Mel Robbins: He basically said that one of the coolest things about reaching your 50s and beyond is that the kids are gone and you can finally start to think about yourself again. One of the coolest things about this phase of your life is that you've been through some hard things. And I want you to give yourself credit for that. You've experienced loss. You've experienced job changes. You may have gone through a divorce and you have a lot more wisdom and life experience, which means you also have resilience that you need to give yourself credit for.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And there's this kind of confidence that comes up where you sort of are like, you know, this is who I am. Take me or leave me. Let them, right? You sort of start accepting yourself. And yes, while you still are going to worry about other people in your life in this period of your life, this is a moment where you need to really double down on yourself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: In fact, there's some really interesting research from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the UK, 73% of job growth over the last 30 years has come for people over 50. So don't be lying to yourself and telling yourself that there are no opportunities. It's completely wrong.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And if you are going back into the workforce, there's really great research from LinkedIn. They did this big thing about the future of work. And they're calling this era a skills-based economy. And whether you've had a long career or you're changing careers or you're going back into the workforce, stop telling yourself you're too old. You have skills from your life experience. Communication, project management. If there are things that you want to learn, there are so many classes online that you can take to brush up on skills related to tech, related to project management, related to AI, and all of that is available to you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The other thing that the research is very clear about is the 50s is a period in your life where friendship really matters. This is a moment where you want to pivot away from a primary focus of caregiving and of just burying yourself in your career and reprioritize friendship. It is critical for you to double down on being proactive and starting to build a community. Because one of the things that you're going to learn about as we jump into how the social clock and this invisible checklist is lying to people in their 60s and beyond is the importance of friendship. The importance of having social connections.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so your 50s, it's not too late. You can reinvent yourself. You can fluff up your social life. In fact, you can meet some of the best friends of your life from this point forward, and you will if you lean into it and you stop lying to yourself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So that brings me to the 60s, where there's a lot of lying that people do to themselves about it's time to retire. In 1935, the Social Security Act set 65 as the age of retirement, and we all just kind of followed in line. Who says you have to retire at 65? Who says you have to work into your 60s if you don't want to? This is your life. Don't live it based on other people's expectations. Figure out what's going to make you happy. Figure out what's going to bring you meaning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: In fact, here's a message from Alyssa who wrote in to melrobbins.com slash podcast. "Mel, to retire or not, I'm struggling with the challenges of retirement, money, no clear plans, and the fear of being forgotten. What if I don't want to retire, but everyone around me keeps asking me, when are you going to retire?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like for me personally, I'm never retiring. I don't want to retire. I don't want to retire because first of all, I love what I do. I love learning. I love the connection to everybody on my team. I love having a sense of purpose. And I believe that 60s is not a time to slow down. 60s is not a time to retire. 60s is the decade where I want you to reignite your passion for life. That's what I want you to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And when I hear in this question, "Should I retire? Should I not retire?" You know what I hear? I hear pressure. I hear expectation. I hear a social clock that's so dumb. How about answering that question from, well, what is going to reignite passion? And passion is just a fancy word for energy. What brings energy into your life?
--:-- Mel Robbins: And look, if you want to retire from your job because you hate it and you've stayed for a pension or you've saved enough money and now you can do something else, great. But maybe do something else that energizes you or brings you passion. Or maybe you're in the camp that a lot of people are in, where you are living in a moment in time where what you save for is not going to actually cover the cost of retirement.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I want to say right up front that I personally feel like being in your 60s right now is a lot like being in your 20s. Experiencing your 60s is very different than what it was like to be 60 just 10 years ago. I mean, I laid out some of the statistics when we were talking about being in your 20s and in your 30s, about the way that the housing market has changed, the cost of living, the chaos in the news, the up and down in the stock market, all this stuff is impacting the financial obligations that you have, the realities that you're going to live longer.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And also keep in mind that when the age of retirement hit at 65 in 1935, the life expectancy wasn't that high. And now you're living longer. And so the reality might be that you planned for a certain age, but now that you're there, you're like, wait a minute, I'm really engaged. I don't want to just sit around and fill it with golf and mahjong. I mean, I want to be doing something. And that's a really cool thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Or maybe the reality is that you saved and you thought you'd be in a certain place, but now you live in a part of the world where my God, the insurance costs are rising or you have a health condition and so you need the insurance. That's just the reality. And so it's not a time to pressure yourself to retire unless you want to. It's a time to really think about passion and how you reignite it in your life. What can you be doing, whether it's volunteering or a different type of job or staying in what you're currently doing to keep energy and passion alive?
--:-- Mel Robbins: And this is important because the research is pretty clear that there is a pretty deep decline in verbal memory. There's an uptick in depression and social isolation that happens when people retire because you underestimate how important it was to be engaged in a community at work, to be focused on the things that you are working on and how it stimulates your brain, the rhythm and the structure of your work life and how it gives you a sense of purpose and how it gets you out of bed in the morning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The same is true with what I was talking about with your 20s. If all you're doing is hybrid work and you've never experienced that, not having that structure creates its own isolation and sense of being lost. The fastest growing segment of the workforce is people 65 and older. I love that people are staying engaged. I love that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I want you to really think about it. And if you're starting to feel like, well, I'm kind of getting a forced retirement, I'm needing to kind of leave gracefully, just think about what's next. Just because you're leaving one job or you're closing the door on one chapter of your career, do you know how much you have to give to a nonprofit or you have to give to a new venture or you have to give by sitting on boards? Stay involved because it's really going to help you stay energized and passionate in your life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: When you decide to retire, choose to do it because it's what you want to do, not because society expects you to do it. You're not behind, you're not ahead, you're just living your life based on a way that makes it exciting and meaningful for you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And if you are choosing to retire in your 60s, I want to just highlight the research, and this is important for you to share with people that you love. It is critical that you get involved in something else. It is critical that you stay social. Do not underestimate how important this is, and do not underestimate how much that is provided by the fact that you're still working.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so there is no timeline. There is no checklist. There is just the research and the reality of where you're at and the reality of where you are in history. And so focus, focus, focus on reigniting your passion.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And that brings me to what's possible in your 70s and beyond. This is not the decade to slow down. In fact, there was an expert that we had on the podcast by the name of Dr. Vonda Wright. She is a world-renowned orthopedic surgeon and researcher in longevity. And what she had to say about aging blew my mind. Everybody that you care about, your parents, your grandparents need to hear this clip. Just check out what Dr. Vonda Wright has to say about getting older.
--:-- Dr. Vonda Wright: There is a pervasive myth in this country that aging is an inevitable decline from the vitality of youth down some slippery slope to frailty where we spend the last 20 years of our lives dying. But the fact of the matter is we actually can be healthy, vital, active, joyful. But people think that they have to go down this slippery slope and that there's nothing they can do about it. But the fact of the matter is there's so much we can do to pre-plan our future.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what I love about her research is that it doesn't matter if you took the worst care of yourself up until this point. Your muscles and your brain are designed to grow and get stronger until the day you die. There are things that you can start doing now that will increase your mobility, your movement, your strength, your vitality, your energy. It is never too late to fully experience the possibilities of your life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I think that is such an exciting message that you don't have to slow down. I personally, I want to be dancing the day I die. I literally want to go, go, go, go, go, and boom, drop dead. That's exactly what I want to do. Now, is it going to happen? I don't know. But I hold that vision for my life and I hold that vision for you too. It's not a time to slow down. It's a time to get strong and to stay strong and to be connected and to be social and to have more fun.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And one of the things that's more important than ever is connection. If there were ever a decade to double down on your relationship with your family, your friends, your loved ones, it's now. Relationships matter. And here's what I'm gonna tell you. If there are things you need to apologize for, if there's somebody that you have not forgiven, if there is someone that you've never said "I love you" to, now's the time. It doesn't matter what's gone down in the past. There are always ways that you can build bridges to people and create a different future.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And being proactive about creating stronger connections with your loved ones, with friends, meeting new friends, heck, even finding love again. You know, one of the things that's very inspiring to me is that my mother-in-law has been a widow for 19 years. She has found the second love of her life at the age of 85. How cool is that? I mean, she's giggling like a teenager for crying out loud. They're so cute together.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I just love thinking about the fact that some of the best days of your life are ahead of you. And when you adopt this truth that your body is designed to move, your body is designed to be strong, your mind really wants to learn and be connected, and it can, that what brings meaning into your life, particularly near the end of your life, is connection to friends and family, and you can build it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And in fact, I was talking with my parents the other day. My mom is 76 and my dad is 80. And their community where they are over the winters in Florida has really shrunk, either because people are no longer coming down or they're getting older. And a lot of their friends who are a decade older than my parents, they're dying, which is super sad. And I was saying to my dad the other day, like, what do you think you guys want to do in the next couple of years? Do you want to stay in your house? Do you want to go? And my dad was so cute. He was like, well, we're really thinking about it. We're thinking about where we might want to be. And we're thinking about the possibility of making lots of new friends and getting re-engaged in a new community. And I just think that's so exciting to have that attitude.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so, the BS that we've been sold about the fact that you're supposed to slow down and get fragile and disconnected and get grumpy and grouchy, it's not true. It's simply not true. And the science is there to prove it. And the evidence is all around you. In fact, let me just give you some really fun statistics. Betty White worked until she passed away at 99. Dick Van Dyke just starred in a Coldplay music video. George H.W. Bush, my dad talks about this a lot. He's like, I think I want to do that. Went skydiving on his 90th birthday. If they can do it, so can you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: In fact, one of the other cool things that's available to all of us is tech. We complain a lot about social media, but you know how many 90-year-olds have millions of followers on TikTok? One of my favorites is Grandma Droniak. She's hilarious. You might even recognize her voice. I want to play a little clip. This is Lillian Droniak. She's got 14.8 million TikTok followers. The channel is managed by her grandson, Kevin, which I also love because that's an example of how she's being proactive to stay connected with her grandson. And she's having fun all the way until she drops dead. Just listen to this. It's hilarious.
--:-- Lillian Droniak: Get ready with me. My first date in 25 years and he's going to pick me up in 20 minutes. I'm getting nervous now. I met him at Bingo and that's the way it goes. He's really handsome and I couldn't say no. Powder, powder, powder. I might kiss him. You never know, but I'm going to still put lipstick on just in case.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know what I love about that? You can tell she's having fun. And I think that brings us back to the whole point of this conversation. Who says you're supposed to be a certain way at 90? It's complete BS. You can be any way you want. And if you can be any way that you want, if you can do whatever you want in the decades of your life, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to have fun? Why wouldn't you want to re-engage in your passion? Why wouldn't you want to stop pressuring yourself and holding these expectations over yourself and lying to yourself?
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're not lost. You're not behind. It's not too late. You have plenty of time to figure things out and you will. And now is the time to stop holding the social clock over your head, to delete this invisible checklist and to double down on where you are in your life, what you want, the moment of history that you're in and imagine a bigger possibility and remind yourself every step of the way, this is your life. Stop comparing. Stop apologizing. Stop telling yourself you're behind because you're not. You're right on time. You are capable of figuring this out and you will.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All righty, in case nobody else tells you, I 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 I think what we've learned today is recognizing when you're holding yourself to somebody else's or society's expectations, that's not how you're gonna create a better life. That's how you're gonna stress yourself out, make yourself depressed, drive yourself crazy. So stop doing it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Creating a better life requires you to take ownership of where you are and what you actually want and how you wanna feel. And I'm here to remind you, and I hope you will start reminding yourself that whatever it is that you decide you want to create in this decade of your life, you're capable of doing it. Now get to work. I'll see you in a couple days. I'll be waiting in the very next episode to welcome you in the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.
--:-- [Sound of wind or jingling]
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right, you ready? No, you're good. Okay, here we go. Great, great. Okay, awesome. Okay, great. And where, hold on a second. Is it that, Wendy? It's getting louder. Is it wind? Like, what is that? What is jingling? It's a weather vane that I'm going to have to have removed from this. But as the months roll by, and as I've matched my thousandth match on all the dating ads, and as I've matched my thousands... Oh my God, I can't talk right now. All right, great. Let's have lunch. What time is it? It's three? How did that take so long? That's how we do it, people. Okay.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what 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.
--:-- [Bonus segment begins]
--:-- Mel Robbins: This bonus segment is sponsored by Walmart Plus. Spring is here, thank goodness, right? And with it comes the perfect moment to reset, refresh and refocus on what really matters to you. Whether that means spending more time with your family instead of running errands or spending more time in your garden or making smarter choices for your budget, Walmart Plus makes it easier. It's a paid membership program with tons of benefits and it's super easy to sign up at plus.walmart.com to get free delivery when you spend at least $35, gas savings, free shipping with no order minimum, and video streaming at no additional cost. It's all designed to save you time and money.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, I know you're here listening to this bonus segment because you really want to make some positive changes. And I got news for you. Making positive changes doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. When in doubt, do the next right thing. Because we're four months into 2025, and perhaps for you, that's four months since you even set some goals for yourself. You want to start a business. You want to save for that dream vacation. You want to spend more time with the people that you love. You want to take better care of yourself. Of course you do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And at first, when you start out working on these things, you feel great. And then life happens. You start slipping. Distractions pile up. And suddenly, all of those good intentions and those goals that you set for yourself, oh my gosh, they just fade into the background. Now, I'm not here to call you out about that, by the way. I mean, the world that you and I live in, it is just overwhelming and it's so easy to get distracted. So it's totally understandable that a few months into the year, you might be feeling a little run down or unsure about how to get back on track.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, if you looked at just what's the next right step now, then what happens is now becomes the perfect time to just hit the refresh button and ask yourself, am I still showing up for the things that I said mattered to me? Momentum isn't about making big dramatic moves. It's simply about doing the next right thing. You can waste your energy beating yourself up for everything you haven't done, or you can realize that you get to decide what you do next.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's say that you have a goal to write a book. And a lot of people have a goal to write a book, and you should write a book. And yeah, it's a big goal and it sounds kind of scary. Is anyone gonna read this? And maybe that's the reason why you haven't made a lot of progress on it. You're constantly talking yourself out of it. What's the next right thing? I'm not talking about building a marketing plan or designing the cover or figuring out the perfect ending. What if you just sat down for 10 minutes today and then the next day, the next right thing was to sit down again and just put a few words on the page.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Or maybe you're trying to get healthier, but then you just stress eat your way through the work week on fast food. What's the next right thing? It's not punishing yourself. The next right thing is just choosing a healthy meal to cook instead of spiraling. Research out of Stanford Graduate School of Business shows that the way that you and I structure our goals has a huge impact on your success. When you are just starting out on any kind of change or big goal, breaking that goal or change down into smaller, more manageable, kind of like micro goals, it actually boosts your focus and increases your motivation. Because when you have these tiny little milestones, what happens is the overall goal feels more attainable. And because it feels more attainable, that gives you the little extra encouragement and push that helps you get going and keep going. Just focus on the next right thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Thank you again to Walmart Plus for sponsoring this bonus segment. A better life starts with the small decisions you make every day, because those small decisions can add up to really big impact, like the decision to join Walmart Plus. With Walmart Plus, your goals of saving time and money are right within sight with free delivery, free shipping, gas savings, video streaming, and so much more. Walmart Plus can make the rest of your life easier as it should be. Start a free 30-day trial at plus.walmart.com. See Walmart Plus terms and conditions. $35 order minimum. Paramount Plus essential plan only. Separate registration required. Thank you.
