The Best Years of Your Life Are Ahead of You: A No BS Approach to Feeling Stuck

Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I'm so glad that you joined me today, because I'm going to prove to you today that anywhere in your life that you have a problem, or you're stuck, or you're struggling, or you just can't get the results that you want, I guarantee you, you're working on the wrong problem. You're attacking it all wrong. That there is something deeper that you're not seeing. It's below the surface. And today I got my shovel. We are going to dig deep and we are going to get to the root of the problem.

[Mel pauses for emphasis.]

Mel Robbins: I have been doing this now for a decade. You guys write to me from around the world and I read everything that you submit to melrobbins.com and I've noticed something in the last decade since I've been coaching people. Everybody is working on the wrong problem. You can't even see it. And one of the things that I am able to do is I can listen to you for just a little bit and boom, laser right in to the root of it. And so we're gonna get to the root of your problem today.

[Mel introduces a metaphor.]

Mel Robbins: And here's how we're gonna do it. I'm gonna bring in a metaphor. And the metaphor is gardening. I love gardening, by the way. It is one of my favorite hobbies. My parents were big gardeners. I grew up working in the yard every single weekend. My grandparents and my aunts and uncles on my mom's side are all farmers. So dirt and digging in the dirt and growing stuff, it's in my DNA.

[Mel connects the metaphor to life issues.]

Mel Robbins: And I think about the issues in your life that you can't seem to overcome or that keep coming back over and over and over again. It's like weeds in a garden. And so I'm going to tell you a story because you're attacking the weeds all wrong too. You can't just pull weeds out. You got to dig them out at the root. Otherwise, they keep coming back. And this is why I say you're working on the wrong problem. You keep pulling at your problems, tugging at them, clipping at them, snipping at them, whatever, hitting them with the roundup. That's not going to kill them. You got to destroy it at the root.

[Mel shares a personal story about gardening.]

Mel Robbins: I remember there was this one moment when we still lived in Boston, and I started to notice that there was this particular weed that kept coming up in my garden. It was about a foot tall and it looked like the kind of grass you would see, you know, like in the sides of a golf course, you know, that fescue that's like a foot tall and it blows around. Well, this stuff started showing up in the middle of my fricking Montauk daisies and my peonies and my irises. And I'm like, what the hell? And so I'd yank it out of the Siberian irises. And then I'd turn around. I'm like, how the hell is it over there in the peonies? Like, is this bird seed that's scattered about? What is going on? Why is this weird stuff sprouting out?

[Mel describes the solution.]

Mel Robbins: And one day, I'll never forget it. It had been raining for like a week. And so the first sunny day I get out there and I'm like, oh my God, there's these clumps everywhere. They just boom. Cause what happens? Things grow when you water it, things in your life change when you tend to it. So I start with the irises and instead of just yanking it like I normally did, which is basically just ripping it off at the surface, I just sort of gently started tugging. And as I started tugging, the root started coming out. And then I started shaking at it and the dirt started shaking off. And then I take my shovel and I start easing around because I don't want to slice the root. I need to get to the source of it, right? Otherwise, what happens when you just trim something, when you cut it off at the surface? Well, that just empowers the roots to start sprouting up other things.

[Mel reveals the deeper issue.]

Mel Robbins: Well, I'll be damned, you guys. I get the shovel and I dig underneath and I start popping it up. And because the soil is wet, it's a lot looser. This fucking root went from my irises all the way under our lawn to the other flower bed, 10 feet away to pop up another clump into the peonies. And that same damn root was also the source of the clump of fescue that was now growing in my daisies and in the flocks. And I couldn't believe it. It was all coming from the same root.

[Mel connects the metaphor to life coaching.]

Mel Robbins: And if there's one thing I've learned in a decade of coaching people and all of the research that I've done is that when it comes to the things that aren't working in our life, we have such a low tolerance for going deep that we just try to remove it at the surface. And then all of a sudden you're dating another loser. All of a sudden the same shit with your mother showing up, all of a sudden the same wound from your childhood is getting triggered. Why? Why does this keep happening? I'll tell you why. You're working on the wrong problem. Because you're just trying to clear it away at the surface. You're missing the bigger picture. These problems all connect. There is a root cause that you need to dig out. And today I'm going to teach you how to do it.

[Mel introduces the guest.]

Mel Robbins: A fellow listener of the Mel Robbins podcast wrote to me, Ricky. She's 44. She is stuck on the outside. Her life looks amazing. The garden's beautiful, right? But she can't get where she wants to go. She feels like she's lost a part of herself. She doesn't know what the hell's going on. All her friends think her life looks great, but it's not. And let me tell you something, she's working on the wrong problem. But Mel Robbins has her shovel and I'm going to dig deep and wait till you discover what I find because it comes out of nowhere. You ready? I sure am. Let's start digging.

[Mel and Ricky begin the coaching session.]

Mel Robbins: Hi. Hi. It's so good to see you. No, it is so good to see you. Oh, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me. Let's get started. How can I help you, Ricky?

Ricky: Okay, I am stuck. Okay, like I feel like I am in quicksand. And every time I try to move, I sink. I've been on the personal growth or development for years. I've read like all these self-help books. I've done programs. I'm 44 now and I feel like life has passed me by. I'm in a job that's, I mean, pays the bills. It's not fulfilling. I thought that I'd be in a relationship, have a husband, have kids by now, but don't. The relationship with myself is not where I'd like it to be. And I'm in the worst dream that I've ever been in my life. And I look at myself in the mirror and I'm just like, okay, those 30 pounds, where did they come from? Oh yeah, that's right. You made all these choices of eating bad food, right? I don't know what to do. I don't know where to start. I don't know. Well, I do know where to start, but at the same time, I feel like I don't know where to start. I don't know where to go from here because I've read all the books, because I've done all of that stuff. I'm just like, but I'm still here.

Mel Robbins: Thank you for sharing all that. And what I got is that you're in a job that's not fulfilling, but it pays the bills. That you're in the worst shape of your life. You have put on an extra 30 pounds. That you are not where you thought you would be in your personal life, because at the age of 44, you thought you'd be married and have kids. And your relationship with yourself is also in the gutter. And on top of all of this, you have read all these self-help books and yet you still feel very stuck. Is there anything else?

Ricky: You've got it in a nutshell, pretty much, yeah.

Mel Robbins: Okay. Yeah. So do you want to hear the good news or the bad news?

Ricky: Let's go for the bad news.

Mel Robbins: Okay. The bad news is your own attitude and story and emotions are going to be the biggest obstacle in your way.

Ricky: Do you want to know the good news?

Mel Robbins: Yes.

Ricky: Let's get some good news on there.

Mel Robbins: What happened? I saw your face kind of go like, oh, when I said the bad news.

Ricky: It's like I gotta do this. It just it felt it feels overwhelming. It feels like this is some work, some real work that I have to do and it feels like daunting. Why does it feel daunting because I feel like I have so much work to do. There's just this insurmountable mountain that is just unattainable. But then there's another part of me that's like no, it's not like you can do this. You've got this. But there's that part of me that's just like, hmm, Ricky, it's not gonna happen for you.

Mel Robbins: Are you experiencing the life that you want to be living right now?

Ricky: No, there's moments. There's moments. Yeah. But the overall. Okay. The reason why the mountain feels insurmountable is because you've convinced yourself that it's too late. That's the only reason why it feels insurmountable. The work is the work, and the work that will change your life and get you in shape and help you find a fulfilling career and get your life force back. The work you need to do is the same work everybody needs to do to have those things. It's the story that you're telling yourself that you're already fucked up and that it's too late and that it's going to require too much and it's not going to happen. That's the only reason why you haven't gotten started.

Ricky: If I could tell you that the best years of your life were ahead of you, would you do the work?

Mel Robbins: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Great. The best years of your life, Ricky, are ahead of you?

Ricky: There's a voice in my head right now. And that voice says, this is BS. And the best years of your life were before, like when you were 22, when you were in your 20s. There's this recording back there that's saying that. And it's so frustrating. It's extremely frustrating because I want to believe you when you tell me that my best years are ahead of me and I have friends who tell me that the best years are ahead of me. Why can't I believe that? Why can't I take what you're saying and actually truly hang on and believe it 100% because that's really what I want.

Mel Robbins: There's a number of reasons why. Number one, you've been telling yourself the other story for so long that it's not going to happen, that that's become your belief. Number two, because that's been your story, that it's not going to happen, and you're sad about that, your actions in your day-to-day life, your routines, your rituals, your habits, they now match that story. You have started to align with a person who believes that the best days of her life are behind you, which is why you're not taking care of your health. It's why having a job that is slowly sucking your soul dry but paying the bills is enough. It's why you've given up or lowered your standards when it comes to the kind of person that you want to attract. Your actions keep you stuck because your actions are the kind of actions that somebody who doesn't believe that the best days of their life are ahead of them are taking.

[Mel asks Ricky about her past.]

Mel Robbins: And so the solution is to figure out what the day life looks like of a woman who believes that the best days of her life are ahead of her. And by God, she's going to act that way. And I have a suspicion that something happened to you, either in your late 20s or in your 30s, that knocked you on your ass and knocked you off track and you haven't recovered from it. Because it strikes me that you say my 20s were the best time of my life. And so tell me about what was going on in your 20s that made you feel like it was the best time of your life. And then I want to know what the hell happened that changed it.

Ricky: In my 20s, I was more confident. I was doing the things that I liked. I was... um... what really happened? My dad died. Okay, how old were you? He died when I was 28. Yeah, and there was after that, there was some depression that happened and you know some significant breakups that happened, and I feel like those were just like probably things that crushed me and I just didn't really recover.

Mel Robbins: There you go. That's what happened. You experienced profound loss. The loss of your father, followed by the breakup of a significant relationship, spun you around. That foundation got ripped out from underneath you. If I had to describe it, I would say that you went through a great loss and you have spent a decade grieving. And that you've spent these past couple years kind of waking up from that and being disappointed with where you are. That's okay. It's okay. It's so easy, Ricky, to find yourself in a situation where you've read all the books, you listen to the podcast, but you do nothing. You're stuck in a freeze trauma response in your body where things kind of stopped moving forward when your dad died. And I kind of have this vision of you, almost like hunkered down waiting for the next thing to happen. So like you go into this mode of not dreaming, not going for it like you used to in your 20s, to just getting through the day. And when you read all the books, you gain knowledge, right? That stays right up here in your brain. But what you're dealing with is you're dealing with something that happened to you in your heart and your soul. So that's where we got to go to work.

[Mel asks if the insights are landing.]

Mel Robbins: Is any of this landing for you?

Ricky: Yeah. I can see the wheels turning in your head, Ricky. And I can also tell that you're the kind of person who really needs a moment to process. My husband, Chris, is like that too. So I want to give you a chance to really let what we've been talking about sink in, about how your dad's death is directly connected to how stuck you feel right now. And we're going to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsors. And when we return, you and I are going to explore how they connect, and more importantly, what you're going to do next.

[After the break, Mel and Ricky continue.]

Mel Robbins: It's so easy, Ricky, to find yourself in a situation where you've read all the books, you listen to the podcast, but you do nothing. You're stuck in a freeze trauma response in your body. Where things kind of stopped moving forward when your dad died. That's me coaching a listener named Ricky. I'm Mel Robbins. And Ricky wrote in because she's 44 years old. Her life is not where she thought it would be. And she feels really stuck. And we just connected the dots between her feeling stuck in her life right now and 16 years ago when her father died. So Ricky, you've had a chance to kind of think about what we've been talking about. Do you see how your father's death is connected to how you feel right now?

Ricky: You know what I just thought of? So it's just like popped into my head. Um, I used to really, really love working out and it never felt like a chore. It was just something I'd love to do and I would be running and I... But where I found out that my dad had passed away was when I just finished a workout and I opened my locker and I checked my phone. And so I found out he passed away while I was at the gym. And after that, going to the gym, like, yes, I still went, but it never had the same momentum to it anymore. And I'm just connecting that right now.

Mel Robbins: That is a beautiful insight, a life-changing one. Because do you remember what happened is, let's go back to that moment. You open up the locker, you reach in and you grab your phone. And how did you learn? There was several messages from my sister that were there. And so I called back and then she had said to me, "Let me see where I told her I was at the gym and she's like okay well just call me when you get home and I was like what's going on something in me knew that because he was he had been in the hospital at the time and something in me I was just like just tell me just tell me just tell me and then she had and then she told me, see, and I remember yes you remember because that's a traumatic event in your life. And it got married with something that you love to do. So it makes perfect sense that it pulled the ease and the joy out of the thing that you used to love to do.

[Mel explains the impact of grief.]

Mel Robbins: Yeah. And it's the strangest thing is that I've never really put that together. Like I never really connected that. I didn't really feel like I've been grieving over for 10 years. I felt like, like when I think about my dad passing away, I feel like I've grieved and I feel like I've moved forward and I feel like I'm okay with it. I didn't really connect my being stuck in my life to that. So I think you gave up on your own dreams but you did grieve Ricky. You went through what psychologists call the acute phase of grieving, which according to the experts, it can last between six months to a year and it's really personal how we experience grief but what tends to happen is the acute grief, that just overwhelming avalanche of sadness and anger and questioning and numbness, it doesn't really disappear. You just adapt and you adjust to the loss. And that's what you did. But sometimes that grief, it just sticks around under the surface and it nags at you. And there's this heaviness and this stuckness, and it just makes it feel so hard to move forward.

[Mel introduces a grief expert.]

Mel Robbins: And I want to tell you about it because I think it's really helpful to move through the loss and create a different context for it. The sixth stage of grieving is finding meaning, allowing yourself to find purpose again in your life and to find the meaning for you in the loss that you experienced. And when you start to look at your healing and the things that you do next as finding purpose again, I think it's really going to help you.

[Ricky shares more about her relationships.]

Ricky: I did. It's weird because it's not just one relationship. It was like everything, every relationship that I kind of got into afterwards, it was just like I can't even really explain it but in my mind I believed that more would come of it and I'm embarrassed even like talking about this right now why? Why? Because you don't want to be that person that thought there was more and then there really wasn't and I feel like that's what I have been yeah that's why and it hurts yeah I can see why that would hurt.

[Mel offers a different perspective on relationships.]

Mel Robbins: Consider looking at those relationships through a different lens, because we're going to start working on the story that you're telling yourself. Yeah. Because the relationship story is, I'm a failure. I fall for people, and I think that it's going somewhere, and they don't want me the way that I want them. I'm a failure. We just met, but I have a hunch that if you were to look back on those string of relationships that didn't work after your father died, you were showing up in those relationships with a hole that grief had created. So when you get attached to somebody because they are filling a need that you have that you can't do in your own life, that's when things get out of balance. And because you were grieving, and I get the sense from you because you strike me a little bit like me that you thought you're fine. So we're going to move on and we're going to keep working and we're going to go forward with life. And now I'm going to meet this person and everything's okay because I don't want to scratch on that deeper thing. That's really painful because I'm okay and I'm going to be tough. And yet you carry all that stuff with you.

[Mel assigns an exercise.]

Mel Robbins: I want to walk you through a super simple exercise, okay? Okay. I can see you processing what emotions are coming up for you. I don't want to cry. Why? If I cry right now, it'll be really ugly. Great and I'll just be really sobby great what are the tears about letting go I I am so used to feeling a certain way that feeling that imagining feeling differently feels uncomfortable what is the way that you're used to feeling let it come up doesn't matter that how much good comes into my life event like it will never be how i want it to be i will never get to where all the things that i desire that they'll actually never it'll come so close but not for me it happens to everyone else around me, then it won't happen for me. Well, it definitely won't. If that's your belief. Because you won't let it in. Yeah.

[Mel offers a breakthrough.]

Mel Robbins: Is this the way you want to experience life no no no so ricky i'm gonna now teach you how to flip this because if this is not the way that you want to experience life anymore we have to change it like right now let's make today and this conversation day one of your new life. And that's exactly what we're going to start doing when we come back, because there's a question, Ricky, that I'm going to dig deep into with you. And for you listening, I'm going to ask you that question too. So if you're ready to flip the way that you're thinking about things and make today, day one, let's go, Mel. I'm down. I'm ready. This is not the life I want to be experiencing.

[Mel plays a recorded update from Ricky.]

Mel Robbins: Well, we are going to do that after a short word from our sponsors. So stay with me. Hey, I'm Mel Robbins and I'm back with Ricky. And before we went to the break, we were talking about how if you believe that it doesn't matter how much good comes into your life, it's never going to get to where you want it to be. You have to change your belief. And so I want to start that conversation right now with both you listening and with Ricky, who's sitting here with me. And we're going to start by answering this question. What would you have to change about the way you live your life or the story that you tell yourself in order to experience your life differently. Rikki?

Ricky: I would have to change that story. I would have to change that belief. I would have to do things differently. Yes. And for starters, you'd have to allow yourself to cry. There have been so many moments in our conversation where the silence is just palpable, Ricky. I don't think you're just processing. I think you are pushing down the emotions that you're feeling. And tears are super important because all the tears that you cry over somebody that's died, it's just the love that you didn't get to express while your dad was here. So the crying and the letting the emotion up, it's a way to let love into your life. And all the tears that you need to cry over the fact that you're not where you want to be, over the baggage that you're dragging around, the beating yourself up, the way that you've been just so hard on yourself for so many years. It's like this backpack that you drag around. When you get upset about that. It's a way to release all of that heaviness. You can hear the heaviness in your voice when you talk, Ricky. I think you focused so much on just holding it together and being strong and don't cry and don't cry and don't cry. And then you're pounding on all this evidence about how things are not working. No wonder you can't let the love and the joy and the connection in. You're protecting yourself from it. So many people do this. I did this for so many years too. That's why I can tell that it's what you're doing, Ricky. I can tell you what to do, Ricky. And I will. I'll give you the domino that you need to tip first that will trigger a ton of change. And if you just start chipping away at it, we can change absolutely everything. You can lose weight, start feeling like you're in your 20s again you can change your job you can get support and heal and really do the work to complete and feel present with your dad you can forgive yourself for how you spent the last 14 years you can do all that the doing is the easy part we got to figure out what you want to believe and then we got to start aligning your day-to-day actions with the belief that you want to be driving your life. And so that part's easy. It really is because it's just, here's the shit you need to do. Fucking do it. That's it. That's change. But there's a deeper breakthrough for you, letting love in. And I have this visual that I use in my mind because I didn't realize how much I blocked love. I like to think about like your heart and your life as having a door, right? That separates you from the rest of the world. And for many, many years, the door between me and my heart and soul and the rest of the world was this mid-century steel thing that you would see on a castle that is impenetrable because I didn't trust people. I didn't love myself. I didn't feel like I was worthy. I saw all kinds of reasons why I'd fucked things up, why I was a bad person. And as I've done more and more work to change the story about what I want to experience in life, I got rid of that door and I put the kind of doors that you see in a restaurant, you know, that's got the tooth and they swing back and forth because it allows me to be more present to when I'm letting love flow to other people. And more importantly, when I allow the love to flow back to me. Does that resonate at all with you? I'll tell you why it doesn't. And maybe you can help me with it because maybe it doesn't, I'm just not, I'm not seeing it. So I'm that friend that's always there. I'm that sister or that person that's always there holding space for everybody else, being the rock for everyone else. I give so much love. And I do receive love. I think that I do, but maybe I don't. I don't know I just you're shaking your head like no rocks typically don't allow a lot of love in and if you're spending a lot of your own energy beating yourself up and feeling disappointed that's going to block love that everybody has to give to you no no no no no i don't need help no i'm okay no you don't have to go with me there no i don't look good in this dress that's not true okay yeah I do that. Me too. Or used to. So what do you think changed when your dad died? I've always wanted to make him proud of me. And when he died I felt like I didn't get the chance to do that and that I never will get the chance to do that even though he never said that he never told me he wasn't proud of me he actually told me before he passed that he was but I guess I just didn't really believe it because I wasn't proud of me. And I just never got the chance to really, yeah, I never got the chance to really show him who I could have been, who I believed I could be. Thank you for going there. And that's another example of not letting love in. When somebody in your life tells you that they are proud of you and you can't hear it, you don't believe it, that's an example of blocking love. Your dad was always proud of you. And that's always going to be true. And you choose whether or not you let that in. Because it's the truth, Ricky. And it will always be the truth. When your dad died, you're the one who decided that there was an expiration date on you becoming the person you want to be. And, you know, there's that term I've seen a lot of people talking about called quiet quitting. It's almost like you quietly quit on your own ambition and your own dreams. And so I want to reclaim that for you. Okay. What's your dad's name? Joe. Joe still here Joe watching Joe is proud of you. This isn Joe shit this is your shit. And here the great news. You do have your entire lifetime to make yourself proud. And Joe's watching. And so your first assignment for me is I want you to write a letter to Joe, your dad. And I want you to thank him for being so proud of you. And I want you to tell him that you miss him, and you still feel that he's here, and you thank him for being with you and guiding you, and that you are writing this because you wanted to make a promise to yourself and a promise to him that you are going to go and do some amazing things in your lifetime? And is he buried somewhere? Yes. Is it close by? Yeah. I want you to go to his grave with the letter and I want you to read it to him. Okay? Okay. And one of the things I also want you to do is I want you to think back to your 20s. And I want you to think about the things that you were doing in your 20s before your dad died. That you don't do now. What are those things? Taking more risks. Great. I was pursuing some creative things. Great. And I don't do that anymore. What you're going to put in your letter is, and Dad, one of the things that I promised to you and to me that I'm going to do is I'm going to bring back, what is the creative stuff you used to do, Ricky? Acting. Singing. Writing. And the reason why this is so incredible is because a job change doesn't go deep enough to change what's actually blocking your life force and your happiness. And if I were to have started this conversation by going, hey, you know what you should do? You should just go act. You'd be like, what the fuck? You change the direction of your life by simply adding in the things that got lost when your life got turned upside down and I think the act of writing that letter and going to your grave and making a promise to him and to yourself that this is what you're going to put back into your life will be a way bigger deal and a way bigger motivator than any formula that I could ever give you. You got to connect the why back to your dad and back to you giving yourself permission to be happy and to be proud of yourself. That's your why. We're done here. Because if you give yourself permission to do that, it will open up so much momentum and energy that you'll change your job like that. You'll start exercising and taking care of yourself. But that's the missing piece. What are you getting from this conversation um like things are clicking that I never actually thought had anything to do with each other you know this this conversation we're having I I had no idea it was gonna go where it went. And I, I didn't think that my dad had anything to do with me feeling stuck. I'm very surprised. Does it make sense? Yeah. When you look backwards over time and you see the events that happened and how those then accumulate and start to weigh you down. And then it slowly starts to shift your day-to-day life and the things that you feel like doing. And you can wake up from a period like that years later, and suddenly you're a person that doesn't exercise anymore and you're not acting anymore. And you don't quite know why. And your own life, Ricky, holds the map for tapping back into your life force energy and your joy and your momentum yeah how you feeling good i mean like it's just hopeful. That's what I should say. I should say hopeful. Terrific. Can you write this letter and go read it to your dad? I can write the letter. Great. I would love to talk to you after you've done it. Okay. There's one other thing I wanted to tell you. Because how old are you again? 44? 44, yes. Okay. So let me tell you something. When I was 44, which would have been 2013, my life was not where I thought it was going to be. I was $800,000 in debt. There were liens on the house. I was struggling with a drinking problem. I was working two jobs to pay our bills because my husband was so depressed and bottomed out that he couldn't do anything. And I could barely keep the groceries on the table and the lights on at our house. So when I tell you at the age of 44 that the best years of your life are ahead of you, I fucking mean it. You will be startled by what you are able to achieve. You will be shocked at what unfolds. I see a smile. Yeah. Yeah. Because that sounds exciting to me. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. I love you. I love you, Mel. Wow. That was incredible. And you want to know what else is incredible? Ricky did write that letter. And she did go to her father's grave. And she recorded an update for you and me. Check it out.

[Ricky's recorded update plays.]

Ricky (Voice Message): Hi, Mel. It's Ricky. So I went to the cemetery to visit my father. And it's crazy just the way that it ended up turning out because a friend of mine was driving down to that area and the day that she was going happened to be the 16th anniversary of the exact same day that we buried my dad 16 years ago. So that was pretty, pretty crazy. Anyway, I read him the letter that I wrote and I told him how much I missed him and how I've kind of been giving up on life. And I told him about the revelations and the aha moments that I had with you, Mel, and that I continued to have