--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. How many times have you tried to escape your life by plopping down on the couch, turning on the TV, and just disappearing into your favorite show and the characters that you're watching? Well, what if I told you, as Shonda Rhimes was writing and producing some of the most successful shows in the history of television—*Grey's Anatomy*, *Scandal*, *Bridgerton*—she herself was doing the exact same thing, escaping her life through the imaginary worlds that she had created.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Shonda was deeply introverted, afraid of everything. All she did was work, and her life was getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And then her sister said something that changed everything. Shonda spent the next year saying yes to everything that scared her. And the result? It changed her entire life, her personality, her happiness, her body, the way she was able to be creative.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, today you're going to hear one of the most personal interviews that Shonda has ever given. And Shonda will tell you, if you feel small, if you're tired of saying yes to everybody else, if you're done with letting fear dictate your life, she knows what that feels like. And she's also going to tell you there's a bigger possibility for your life just waiting for you, that you're more capable than you know. But it's not in escaping it. It's saying yes to it.
--:-- [Intro music fades out]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you are here with me right now. It is always an honor to be together and to spend this time with you, but today is going to be extraordinary. And if you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this with you, first of all, I want to personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. And boy, oh boy, did you pick an incredible episode to listen to.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because today in our Boston studios, we have the one, the only Shonda Rhimes. She is an award-winning television creator, producer, author, and CEO of the global media company Shondaland, who took over the world through television. She's created *Grey's Anatomy*, which is on its 22nd season, one of the longest-running medical dramas of all time. She followed it up with *Scandal*, *Private Practice*, producing *How to Get Away with Murder*. Then she flipped the industry again, producing *Bridgerton*, one of Netflix's biggest global hits.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Shonda's written more than 600 hours of primetime television. Her shows have won Emmys, Golden Globes, a Peabody. She's an inductee in the Television Hall of Fame. She has also written a *New York Times* bestselling book called *Year of Yes*. And that's why she's here today: to talk about how fear disguises itself as perfection, how no can become a comfort zone that slowly shrinks your life and kills your joy, and how learning to say yes, especially to yourself, can change everything.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This conversation is not about what Shonda has built. It's about what she almost lost and how she got it back. Shonda Rhimes, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Thank you for having me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, thank you for making the trip. I'm so excited to meet you. I've admired your work for a very long time, and I'm excited to have the chance to learn from you. And I'm excited for the person that's with us right now to be inspired by and motivated by and transformed by the things you're about to share. And that's where I want to start. If I take everything to heart that you're about to share with us and teach us today, what could change about my life?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: So many things could change about your life. I think the point is for you to figure out where the problems are in your life and how you can take the things that you've been living with but been dissatisfied by and change them. I mean, that's really the goal.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, I tore through your book. I want you to go out and buy this book. It is absolutely fabulous. It is going to be absolutely everywhere. Everyone's going to be talking about it. But what I found was really interesting, and you're going to find this to be interesting too, is that when you originally wrote the book, you were at the height of your career. I mean, you were winning. You were like just like everything. And yet you felt like you were hiding.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I really did. You know, it's interesting. Yeah, it was... I owned all of Thursday night and things were going great. I realized that my characters were living these extraordinary, amazing, imaginative, great lives. And I was living in a very small corner of my own life and not willing to step out of it. I was saying no to everything that anybody asked me to do. I was very shy, very... I mean, I had confidence in my writing and that was probably about it. But I was not... I did not have confidence in myself when I was not a character, you know, when I wasn't writing in the voice of a character. And my life had become really, really small and very unhappy.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think so many of us can relate to this idea that life starts to feel very small. And the other thing that really struck me about that is that you had, at least in the world, like you've got a very unique life because in your writing and in the shows that you're producing and all the stories that you're telling, you are actually seeing the characters come to life.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But even if you don't have that kind of job in the world, you have an imagination, you have dreams for yourself. And I would love to hear you talk just a little bit for the person listening that really relates to that feeling and that sense of being shy or more introverted or feeling that your life is small. And yet you have this sense or this imagination that there's more that you could imagine for yourself. But there's this distance between the little life that you kind of have, but what you have a sense of is out there.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I mean, it's interesting. I think we all have hopes and dreams of things we want to accomplish. They might be about motherhood. They might be about work. They might be about relationships. It can be about anything. But the reality of it is, is most of us are blocked by this huge chasm of fear, right? Being afraid to actually do the thing, being stopped by it simply because you don't even know how to begin, being too afraid to just make the leap because what if it doesn't work out? That, I think, is what stops most of us. And then to make that leap and to leap into it is a really terrifying thing. So I think it's really relatable to have that level of fear and this block between where you want to be, like where you imagine you can be and where you think you could actually get to.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, what's fascinating about your life and when you read the book, you're really gonna get a sense of this, is that your life from the outside looks so big and is so impactful. And so it is kind of stunning when you really read and start to understand that your experience was that it was really small and you were saying no to things. Like, what were you afraid of?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I think everything. I mean, I really do think I was a person who uniquely was raised with a very big confidence in my writing voice. So I was very comfortable with that. But anything else, I was not. I lived through and had for my whole life basically lived through stories. I had experienced things that way. I wrote about things. I worked things out psychologically by writing them down. None of it had anything to do with being in the actual real world. You know, none of it. And so I was always very awkward in the real world. It was a very different environment than the world inside my head. And in a weird way, it hampered me because I did stay in my imagination, right? All the things you imagine and dream, well, I could make those things come true by putting them on the television screen and sharing them with an audience. But that had nothing to do with me personally.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know what I just had this crazy vision of? I had this incredible vision of you in your, you know, at your desk, you're writing all this stuff, you're up in your imagination and living in this world, and yet you have this experience of having this small world and yet feeling blocked by fear.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Do you know how many millions of people around the world were sitting on their couches, escaping their small lives through the characters and the worlds that you were building? And when you watch the work that you do, you can't help but think of something bigger. You can't help but think about different relationships. Can't help but think about different moments in history. And you open us up to this bigger possibility, but then you know what happens? The show's over.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And you go back to your life.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes. Same for me. Yes. Exactly. I just got to live in it longer. And so in a lot of ways was tricked by it longer, I think, because I was living this glorious existence inside of a television screen on a soundstage that had nothing to do with the world.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Why does saying no and allowing your fear of trying anything new or putting yourself out there or even just showing up at a networking event or whatever it may be that you're saying no to, why does that feel like it's safe or it's somehow protecting you?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Well, I mean, you know the environment at home. You know the environment you're in. There's nothing unknown about it. You know, there's no like, "What am I going to say if I meet these new people?" or "What if I say something stupid?" I'm at home in my pajamas on a sofa with a laptop. You know, that's a world I know and I'm very comfortable with. I don't really have to get outside of it because in that world, I'm still the same way. I'm watching television shows. I'm imagining and I'm having a great time, but I'm not experiencing anything new and I'm not challenging myself. And it's much safer that way. I mean, I think for a lot of people, it feels much safer.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It does. And I'm so glad that this book is being re-released with all new stories and chapters right now. And I'm going to tell you why. I think in the last several years post-pandemic and with a hybrid work world and so much time online, people have become more afraid and more kind of self-silencing and saying no when life can be so much bigger. What were some of the things that you were saying no to? Like how shut down and small, because it's hard to believe. Like I can imagine myself on the couch knowing what I'm saying no to, but it is hard to believe. So what does it mean when it says you were living a small life and you were saying no?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I mean, it means I had three or four great friends that I'd known since college. And those were my friends. It means I wasn't meeting anybody new. It means that I remember somebody wonderful wanted to throw me a dinner party and they were like, "It's going to be this intimate gathering of just other women writers." And I couldn't get there. Like I was so stressed out about the whole concept of it and what it would mean and what... I literally couldn't do it. And it was going to be something wonderful. I know I was going to miss something wonderful. I literally couldn't make it out the door. It's that kind of thing. I was saying no to dinner parties. I was saying no to going to events with friends. I was saying no to going anywhere alone, anywhere alone. I was saying no to traveling. I was saying no. I mean, you name it, I was saying no to it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want you as you're listening to Shonda right now or you're watching on YouTube to really think about where in your life are you saying no to something? Where in your life are you not able to go out to dinner alone? You're not able to apply for that job. You're not able to even download the application for nursing school. Right. You know? Because I think you have this sense that you know what you want to say yes to in life.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And yet there we are sitting on the couch. Afraid to make a move.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes. Like absolutely afraid to make a move because, well, for me, I've been saying no so long at a certain point, I didn't even know how to say yes. It felt uncrazy. It felt unfathomable that I would suddenly just say yes to something and leave the house. And I think for other people, that's true in many ways. Like you said, download the application to nursing school. I think there's so many people who are like, "I wish I could be this or I wish I could do this, but I can't." And they don't have a reason why they can't.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: The same reason why I don't have a reason why I couldn't go to a dinner party. You just don't have it in you.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: And the reality was you do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what happened? Like, you know, like what was it? It starts with your sister, but like put us at the scene.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: So my oldest sister is 12 years older than me and kind of like almost a second mom. And she's cooking Thanksgiving dinner and she's doing it at my house because we're going to host the family. And I'm going on and on to her, like sort of bragging about all of the invitations and all of the wonderful things that are happening for me and going back and forth about, you know, literally, I think I'd been invited by the King of Monaco somewhere, like all kinds of crazy things. In New York, they wanted me to do this and this and this. I got invited to this party. And my sister just stopped and looked at me because she knows me. And she goes, "Shonda, are you going to do any of these things?" And I remember feeling like shocked that she'd even asked that question. I was like, "Absolutely not. Like, there's no way." And I had my reasons. I was like, "I'm a mom of three. I have all these shows on television. I don't have time for any of this." And she really gave me like a lecture and then kind of said, "You never say yes to anything." And it stuck with me. Those words just stuck with me for a while as being really true. And the more and more I thought about it, the more true it was. And the more clear it was that she was right. I wasn't saying yes to anything.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Sometimes somebody that you love like drops a grenade in your head and it tick, tick, ticks, and then it goes off and you write in your blockbuster bestseller—I'm going to read you your own words from page 48. This is a chapter, um, yes. "I'm not enthusiastic, but I am determined. My logic is wildly simple. It goes like this: saying no has gotten me here. Here sucks. Saying yes might be my way to someplace better. If not a way to someplace better, at least to someplace different." Yes. What does that mean?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: To me, it felt like I had absolutely nothing to lose. Like where I was already was completely unsatisfying. I was already miserable.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what were you miserable? You know, because again, like, were you lonely? Were you just, or was it that nagging sense that you knew that there was something and you were the one holding yours? Like, what was it?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I knew that it wasn't supposed to be this. I tell a story in the book where I talk about, I became a member of the board of the Kennedy Center back in the Obama administration. And I arrived for like the first big event. And they informed me that I was sitting with the president and the first lady who I'd never met. And I remember panicking on all levels and then going and having an amazing time and then realizing if they had asked me, not told me, but if they'd asked me if I'd wanted to sit with the president and first lady, I would have absolutely said no. Like the panic, the stress of the idea, it would have been too great for me to actually say yes for myself. I only did it because they said that was what was happening and I couldn't really say no to that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like you're walking now. Like there they are, we're going.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah, this is what's happening. And I realized that I would have missed out on this sort of once in a lifetime insanely amazing event because I was too scared to say yes to stuff. It really struck me as I am harming myself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's the very first yes you said yes to?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: The very first yes I said yes to was speaking at our alma mater. They called me and asked me to give a commencement speech at Dartmouth College. And you're a 90, I'm a 91. And I said, yes, I would do it. And I only said yes because I had just made this rule for myself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And tell the person listening, what is the rule?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: The rule was that I was going to say yes to everything that scared me for one year. And that seemed very terrifying, but it was also six months away. So I could say yes to it and sort of put it in a closet and say, "I said yes to something. Okay." And then things started to happen though, because you said yes to that. So the anxiety and the terror and all that stuff is down the road. So you're like, "Okay, I'm keeping my promise to myself." And then they start to ask me other things. Like Jimmy Kimmel wanted me to do a live tape, a live episode with them. And I just, that sounded insane to me. There's no reason I should be on television for any reason. I was really traumatized by the idea that I would do this. But I finally said yes. And they did it. They taped it. So it was not live, live. It was taped. So that was an experience I had.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: But one of the interesting things about this is that it starts with getting out of the house. It starts with going out, which a lot of people have a lot of fear about doing. It starts with putting yourself out there, showing up alone, doing all the things that feel very hard. And then once you're there, like, well, this isn't so bad. I'm actually glad I went. And I think that's the reality of it, for sure.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I always say doing the things that you fear undoes the fear, like the act of doing it. And it's very hard to realize that before you do it.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: It really is. It just seems insurmountable. And I started with, you know, obviously two things that were very big, but they were small in the sense of it was literally just one step in front of the other. Just do this little piece of this and do this little piece of this.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, one of the things, though, that I find really fascinating, you write a lot about this, is that it's not just saying yes to actual physical things. That maybe as you're listening right now or you're watching, you're starting to think of a promise and a yes that is more about like a big thing about how you treat yourself. And one of the things for you was about saying yes to your health and to your body.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What does that mean? And what does yes mean in that regard?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: You know, it's so interesting because the yeses are mostly internal and mental.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Really?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes, you start out with these big things, but the reality of it is, even saying yes to a commencement speech is really saying yes to the idea that I'm going to commit to this idea of saying yes. Okay. Everything gets smaller. Saying yes to my health did turn out to be a pretty big one. And that was really... I was, you know, I think I'm beautiful at any size that I am. And I generally would fight anybody who would say anything otherwise. But I felt horrible. Like physically, I had gotten to a size and a weight that I felt physically bad all the time. And so I decided that I had to figure out like what to do about this. And so I decided to say yes to my body, like yes to my health. Okay. And it was small, it was small things. It was figuring out, like I went to my doctor and I said like, "I don't want to be fat anymore. Help me. What do I do?" Like things like that.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: And it really was about just deciding, okay, I'm going to listen to the doctor and do what she tells me. I'm going to say yes to the idea that maybe I should be drinking more water. And I'm going to say yes to the idea that I'm going to figure out when I'm hungry. Because I had never once in my life eaten because I was hungry. That never even occurred to me that that could be a thing your body does. Like my body, I was always full. I just wanted food. And so, you know, people talk about, you know, how food is bad for you. Food works. Emotionally, it works. You can put food on... you know, cheesecake can go right on top of your heartbreak and macaroni and cheese lies well on top of your disappointment. Like food works. It really does. But it was numbing me. And so really discovering that was really this internal journey of discovering why I felt this way and why my emotions were that. And so in the end, I ended up losing a ton of weight. But really, that wasn't the thing that was interesting to me. The thing was that I now felt like my body was a part of me versus feeling like it was... I live in my imagination. So versus feeling like it was just something that carried my brain around, it really started to feel like who I was.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know what also just came to me as you were talking? Because you went like, "I live in my imagination." And I'm thinking about that even if you're not a producer or a writer or telling stories, we all live in our imagination.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: We absolutely do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And a lot of what's happening in our imagination are the stories that we're telling ourselves about why we can't, the no's that we're saying.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Mm-hmm.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And since so many people have a really hard time putting their health and their body first, I would love to have us go even like a little bit deeper to really understand kind of what is it... what is like if you thinking about your, like let's put it in the way that your brain thinks. You're thinking about a character and a character who's been saying no, no, no, no when it comes to health and body. What is that kind of behavior? Can you paint a picture so that the person listening might have an epiphany like, "Oh, wait a minute. I never even thought about the fact that I'm not saying yes to my health because I'm so disconnected."
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: You are. And it's interesting. I never thought of myself as being athletic. I've never thought of myself as being perfectly, even a little bit coordinated. I was very safe on this idea that I lived on my sofa. Lying down feels good. I lived on my sofa and I considered it to be a great way of life. I'm like, that's how you're cozy with your friends and your family, you're all sitting around. The love language of my entire family is food. You know, that's definitely how that works. And that's a way of being social and showing a good care for people. But what you're thinking about is not... for me, I really realized that I wasn't saying yes to my health. It wasn't really about that. It wasn't that I was saying no to my... it was that I was saying yes to being like overweight and unhealthy. I was, because that works for me.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I think we do what works. And emotionally, if you feel comfortable and comforted and a little bit numb, it's hard to think of yourself as doing something that's completely different from the routine you've created for so many years, right? The routine of our love language is food. That's how we gather. That's how we... you know, nobody goes outside and plays football on the lawn in my house. It's not a thing. Like changing all of those little details about how you think about your world. It's scary. But I do think like taking that examination and realizing that it's not this giant idea of, you know, "I'm saying yes to my health" in like this giant vague way. It's finding like the specific yeses that make it work for you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, you know, what I love about the *Year of Yes* is its simplicity and yet it's not simple at all. And it actually cuts to the most profound thing because if you really think about how you go about your life every single day, every decision that you make is either a yes or a no.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Or a no, yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And you don't realize the power of the decisions that you make until you boil it down to, "Am I going to vote yes for my health? Or am I going to vote no?"
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: So the no's pile up. You know, they just do. And then suddenly you're like, "I feel terrible physically. I'm not healthy." Because they seem very small. Like, no, I'm not going to work out today. And no, I'm not going to go to the gym. And no, I'm not going to eat the salad. I'm going to eat this over here. Those no's pile up in very small ways. And then suddenly your whole life is a completely different way than you envisioned it in your head. And you can get back by thinking about the way you want to feel and starting to say yes. Saying small yeses.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Like the thing that I think is interesting is we all think that you have to make this huge, big change all at once. Even my doctor was like, "That's a crazy idea. You can't do that." It's about doing little small things first, you know, and it sounds really simple. It's not. Everybody knows losing weight is genetic and physical and all kinds of other things. But finding small things for whatever it is that's bothering you, to make small steps and small yeses and small changes, at least gets you on the path.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, one of my favorite things about at least this work, because you have so much work that I admire and that's impacted so many people's lives, is that whether you realize it or not, it's a tool.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And we can talk about change all we want, but if you don't have a tool to help you do it...
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Exactly.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I love this book and I love what you've added to it because this is both a story. It is both wisdom that is hard earned. And more importantly, it is a tool. Yes or no. Yes or no. Yes or no. Am I saying yes to myself or no to myself? One of the other things that you said yes to is rejecting the traditional idea of marriage.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes, I did.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can you talk a little bit about that?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Wow. I mean, I'm a person who loves weddings. I really am. And like, I literally planned... That's not a surprise, Shonda. I mean, think about what I write. I've planned every character's wedding, like literally like sat and helped plan every character's wedding on *Grey's* for years and years. And when Olivia Pope got married in her dream sequence, I planned that wedding too. All of those things were true. And I love love, obviously. I write about it all the time. But I had been a person who my whole life, I had been... I could imagine being a mom from the time I was a kid. There was never a husband involved. I always say, look, I had a Ken doll and I kept Barbie's shoes in his head. Like, that was what he was for in a lot of ways. And it was not that I don't love dating. I just got engaged and felt suffocated in a way that terrified me.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: And I was also really bothered by the fact that I got engaged to somebody, and I have all of these accolades and accomplishments. And the excitement and joy that somebody else wanted to marry me, people rejoiced like a war had ended. Like, it was crazy. They were far more interested and excited about that than any award, my three children, anything else. And that also really bothered me. And I really think I worried about losing myself and losing the definition of who I was because I was going to have to share another piece of my brain with somebody else. Children take up a lot. Writing takes up a lot. But there was that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah. So what was the hardest?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: The hardest thing, I think, was to admit it to myself and especially to the other person. I mean, I think there's something terrible about putting somebody else in that position. I'm a writer. I had imagined this whole thing into life. I had made plans and created ideas and talked about it and realized that I was putting a lot of fiction into the idea of what I wanted my life to be, but none of it had anything to do with the reality of what I wanted my life to be.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah. You know, I'd bought the fairy tale. I really had, I think. And saying that I didn't want to do that, saying yes to not being a person who wants to get married, it was really hard to let that definition sit inside me. But it also was the greatest relief that I ever felt when I finally said like, "No, I don't want to do this." And that's how I know I'd done the right thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Could you talk to the person who's listening right now who has that just tension and suffocating feeling and just describe that moment and what you want them to know is true when you find the courage to first say yes to yourself, even if it means saying no to somebody who's a good person, they're just not your person.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I mean, there's nothing like that feeling. And I think we're all raised to believe this fairy tale, right? We've all been indoctrinated into it. I don't care what it is. The things that you're told you're supposed to want, you're supposed to want. And when you don't want them, part of you feels like something's wrong with you. But part of you feels like, "Well, I've got to figure this out and sort of shove myself into whatever box I'm supposed to be in." And I remember feeling panicked at all times. I literally remember people saying, "You're glowing," and me thinking, "I'm sweating." Like, I'm not glowing. I'm sweating with panic. And just not able to mold myself into this idea of what you're supposed to want to be. And I think there are so many people, so many people, men and women, so many people who feel like this.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Who feel like these are the things I'm supposed to want, and if I don't want them, I'm somehow wrong, so I better get it together and make myself want them. And I think for so many of us, you can feel yourself dying on the vine. You really can. Like, I felt like I would think about what life would be like, and I would panic. I would have nightmares. I was having sleepless nights. I was really worrying about, like, how would this work? And yet at the same time, I really love this person. This person was wonderful. But their idea of what perfect life was and mine were completely different things, right? Completely different things.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And for me, you know, I would say the biggest yes that I said yes to was difficult conversations.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Oh, can you please talk a little bit more about that?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because I don't want to have difficult conversations, Shonda. I don't think any of us do. I think we all instinctively run from conflict as much as we possibly can. I mean, I think that's just a fact. I still struggle with trying not to run away. But the reality is, the energy you expend making it okay that somebody else is doing something you're afraid to talk to them about, the work involved in sitting with whatever it is they're doing that's driving you crazy, or whatever is happening to you that you won't confront, is so much more depleting than actually just saying the thing you need to say.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I was really bad at it. My work example is that I used to have to let people go sometimes. I have fired people who did not know they were fired and came to work the next day. Because I swear to God, I was so scared of having the conversation. You know, the thing where you say lovely things to get them started and settled in, and then you say the hard thing. That does not work for me because I would say all the lovely things and I'd watch people's faces grow more hopeful and more engaged and more comfortable. And I'm like, "And now I'm supposed to hit them with a hammer?" That's not going to happen.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So lately, not in a really cruel way, but in a way that's really frank, I just don't bury the lead. I start with, "This is not working, and here's why." And then go from there. Because otherwise, if I have to hold off while I'm saying all the nice things, I'm never going to say it. I can't bear the conflict. So to me, you have to have the difficult conversations because the peace it brings you is incredible. The peace it might bring the other person is incredible, to have it acknowledged out loud that this thing is not working. But you really have to be willing to say the hard thing. And I'm always like, say the hard thing first, if you can. That way, I don't have to worry that maybe I never said it at all. I was like, "That meeting went great." And then the next day, there they were. And I realized I'd never said it because I'd been so busy trying to figure out a way to make them feel good and not have the conflict happen.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: You've been saying yes to them and them feeling good versus saying yes to just telling the truth and saying, "This is going to be a really difficult conversation, but I need to have it with you." You're trying to avoid the storm, but the storm is still happening inside you because you won't get it out. I love that example because you can see it, and I can see you in the meeting. But it's relatable because how many of us have wanted to break up with somebody for six months? And you can't get it out. And then you wake up and there they are again, next to you in bed. And suddenly you've been together for so long that it feels really, really horrible what you're doing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes. Yeah. I agree. Yes. The pain of that is so much worse. So yeah, I really have a thing about getting difficult conversations going and just leaning into the idea of it versus running away. Having those conversations about things that you generally just try to avoid to keep from hurting another person, to keep from feeling uncomfortable with what you're doing. Having that difficult conversation, I think, saved my life in lots of ways. I think it really hurt somebody else, but I also think it saved their lives in lots of ways because what would their life have been like married to me when I didn't want to be married? And I think it frees you. It's terrible to have to admit something that you know is going to hurt somebody else, but it's also the kindest thing you can do for them if the alternative is that they're going to be stuck in a life that they didn't want either.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I'm just sitting here thinking about the fact that you have written this scene so many times. How long did you just feel that tension? Because I think that's the other thing that happens in life: you know in your heart, in the quiet moments, what's actually a yes and what's a no. You do. It's hard to listen to yourself, though, because everybody else is telling you what's a yes and what's a no.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Everybody else is telling you how to live. For me, I feel like I've been working this out in my characters for so long, and I don't even think I realized it. Meredith Grey never really wanted to get married either. Remember, she got married on a Post-it note somewhere. Christina Yang flees her wedding and rips off her wedding gown because she's feeling like pieces of her are being cut off by this relationship. Olivia Pope never wanted to get married. All of these people. And I think about it all the time and I think, "Oh, I knew this. I did. I just didn't know how to express it or make it real for me."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hmm. You know, I love what you write on page 48 about no. I found it really fascinating. I love this point where you say that once you saw unhappiness, felt it, recognized it, named it, just knowing about it made you feel itchy.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What a great word, itchy. Like, itchy on the inside of my brain. Continuing to say no was not going to get me anywhere at all. The itchy was too much. That is the coolest way to describe when you're out of integrity with yourself, that something feels like you're agitated. Once you've seen it and it's been revealed and you know it, you can't ignore it.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: It really does. You do start to feel emotionally agitated. The itchy in the brain thing was really real for me. It was the best way I could describe it because I couldn't settle my brain down to calm anymore, now that I knew that I was doing something that wasn't working.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes. And in my life, where I've been in those situations and relationships, I feel that like, "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God," you start having the nightmares that they're going to propose or whatever. And then I try to change that. And then I try to change the thing I'm in instead of going, "Wait a minute, all of this is that I'm actually in the wrong situation. I'm saying yes to the wrong thing." And this is something about your book that I love that I think a lot of people don't understand when they first hear about it. This is actually not a book about saying yes to everything and being a people pleaser and getting through introversion.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Oh, God, no.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What is this a book about? I think it's a book about the steps you take, the courageous steps you take to say yes to the things that are going to complete you. We all say yes to a thousand things, and those things are depleting us every day, every moment. You're saying yes to things to make other people happy. It's about saying yes to the things that are going to make you feel whole.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Well, let me hit you with some Shonda Rhimes on page 368. "Here's the most surprising thing about this decade-long relationship with yes. I have strengthened my ability to know exactly when to say no." Can you talk about that connection between pushing yourself through the fear and pushing yourself toward the possibilities that you see, and how that helps you become stronger and itchier even?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I do. You gotta say no. It's almost like a muscle that you learn to exercise the more you use it. This idea that you start saying yes to things, at first it's just because somebody's asked. You're not even sure if it's something you want to do. And the more you do the things, the less you feel the fear, but it also builds a layer of confidence onto you.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You start to understand yourself in different ways that you've never had before. So, yeah, 10 years on, I'm now at this amazing place where I see myself pretty clearly. I know when I'm saying yes to something because it's going to fill me up or help me or get me to my goals faster. And when I'm saying yes because I'm too tired, too afraid, to whatever to say no, I don't want to hurt anybody. And you start to really be able to recognize those. In the beginning, I was really afraid to say no. After I decided to say yes, I started to be afraid to say no because what if I was missing out on something? And then I started to realize these no's, you have to learn how to say yes to saying no. These no's are not there for you to say yes to. They're not going to help you at all.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Shonda, I am hanging on every word and I know that you are too as you're listening or watching this because let's be honest, there's someone you care about who needs to hear this. Someone who's stuck, who's been playing small, who's forgotten how to say yes. So while we take a quick moment and give our amazing sponsors a chance to share a few words, I want you to take a second to send this amazing conversation to them, okay? Because this could be exactly what they need to start saying no to everybody else and yes to themselves. And don't go anywhere. We're going to return with the extraordinary Shonda Rhimes when we come back. So stay with me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your buddy, Mel Robbins. And if you're anything like me, this conversation with the extraordinary Shonda Rhimes is stirring something up. And I hope it's stirring up a big old yes. So let's keep it going. Shonda, you're saying yes. You're getting out of the house. We're not living the small life anymore. You're doing all this stuff you don't want to do. Other than the example you just gave us, which is a very profound example about recognizing you love someone and you don't want to marry them, were there examples where you said yes, and you went and started the thing, but then that itchy no, this actually is now something I need to say no to?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: There definitely were. What was great about the Year of Yes and making that pledge was it gave me a framework.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: It gave me rules to live by. I was going to say yes to everything that scared me for one year. When the year was over, I could go back to being myself, almost in my head. Having that framework helped. But then you start saying yes to things and you're there. And I would be thinking, "I'm having a terrible time. I don't even know why I'm doing this." Or, "I'm joining people at this party and I don't like anybody here." Even small things like that. "I'm taking this exercise class and I hate every minute of it and I hate everything about it and none of it makes any sense." Lots of things, all kinds of things I tried. And I was like, "This does not work for me." But what was great was it was a weird way of finding out what doesn't work for you as well. And by the way, they were still things I was afraid of. And I did them and I wasn't that impressed by them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, what I love about this is you just taught me and the person listening the relationship between yes and no. Because you're taking on this challenge to say yes to everything that scares you for a year. What saying yes does is it says yes to your confidence and your courage. It really does. But then you get into the situation, you've pushed through the fear, but now you're actually developing the confidence to go, "You know what? I don't actually like this kind of party."
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So now I can say no next time without it being a fear. It's clarity.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: You've been afraid of it for so long and you haven't ever done it.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: So you think it's something you're supposed to want and then you do it and you're like, "This is ridiculous. I don't know why I was even thinking this." It does allow you to become more discerning, more comfortable with yourself, and definitely more confident in what you want. There's a lot of listening to yourself that goes on when you start saying yes, I think.
--:-- Mel Robbins: For sure. Now, was there anything that you said yes to that you thought was going to go a certain way, it didn't, but those sorts of things always give you a lesson that you needed?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: The biggest one, I think, was the getting married idea. I said yes to that and then it didn't go the way I thought it was going to go. But I don't know. I think there were lots of small things. There were some things that probably didn't get written about in the book. There were some travels that I went on, like the whole group travel thing. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to travel in a group because I was always like, 'What do you do 24 hours a day with these people that you don't know very well?'" I was always really afraid to do that. I would get these amazing invitations to come and stay. And so I said yes to one. And I remember thinking two hours in, "This is a horrible mistake. This is a horrible mistake. These are not even the nicest people. They're very bad people to travel with." Some of them are still my friends, so I'm not going to mention it.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: And then they're in charge of what you're doing. Since they planned it and I said yes, I feel like I can't vote. I found myself eating in horrible places and sleeping on some bed that's the worst thing you've ever slept on and sharing a room and horrible things. And I realized I thought I was missing out on this adventure that people have. People have these adventures. And I was like, "I'm going to have this adventure." It wasn't an adventure at all because it wasn't an adventure to me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That is the thing that makes it important and matter. You also liberated yourself from this feeling of FOMO and wonder and all these things, and you conquered your fear and got clarity around it. It's so beautiful. Why do you think women in particular, why are we so damn bad at saying yes to ourselves, but we're so good at saying yes to everybody else?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: We're so great at saying yes to everybody else.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I think a lot of it is people have a fear of not being thought of as nice or kind. It's very interesting because it's the whole "Let Them" theory. This idea that you're going to be nice and kind to somebody else and be horrible to yourself because you simply can't figure out how to have them think of you that way. And it's fine for people to think of you however they want to think of you. You're not a cruel, evil person. So I don't think that's what's going to happen. But we're all so worried about it. We talk about this a lot. I have a group of women who I play golf with. And this is like our main topic of conversation. I'm always like, "Why are you saying yes to that?" And they're like, "Well, I didn't want her to feel bad. And I didn't want my kid to know. And I didn't want this." Everybody has excuses. The reality is, we don't want to be seen that way. We're afraid that people won't like us.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Which is, I'd be more afraid that people won't think I like myself.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: You know?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah. And if we go back to what you said in the beginning, that you had this experience where you started to realize that your life was actually very small. If you're somebody that struggles with saying yes to everybody else, taking care of everybody else, everybody else's happiness, everybody else's expectations, driving yourself into the ground, you never have time for yourself, you're exhausted and you're running around, but you feel like your life is very small as well, in the very same way.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because you're still not living your life. You're living everybody else's. It's really true. How would taking on a Year of Yes help someone who is a yes person?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes. I feel like I've said yes a thousand times.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I know, I feel like it's hard not to say it in this one. But I do think that you can take this idea of the Year of Yes and use it as saying yes to yourself. Okay, so let's use an example. Let's say you have been invited to go on a weekend women's trip planned by a friend who you love, but with a group of people you're not particularly excited to be with. And as soon as you start to go, we're going to use your very simple, amazing tool. Is this a yes for me or is this saying no to me? Am I saying yes to them or yes to myself? And you know, because you get the itchy brain. You know what you want to do. But Shonda, I'm scared to make my friend mad at me. I'm scared to have her be upset. I'm scared to get the guilt trip or the passive aggressive thing. And you feel the weight of it. And this is when you start to get really small and you don't want to go. What do I do, Shonda?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Why do you like them and want them to be happier than you like yourself and want yourself to be happy? That's the thing. You are literally choosing another person over your own happiness and contentment for reasons that make no sense. It's not going to be a friendship ender. And if it is, that person's the wrong friend anyway.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: That person's not your friend if this is going to ruin your friendship because you won't do what they want you to do. That's a problem. It is a real problem. And it's just that your friend's not interested in you being happy at all.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, here's what I—you asked the question, why do we do that? I think we're just used to it.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I think so too. I think it's something that's been ingrained in us. And it's the same thing with taking a compliment. I wrote a whole chapter about that because you sit with people and it's everywhere. I don't care who you are, what level of life you're at. You can be in fifth grade. Somebody will say to you, "Oh my God, that was so smart of you to say." Or, "Oh my God, you accomplished something and that was so great." Or "I love your outfit." And people continuously say things like, "Oh no, no, I just got this someplace on sale." Or they're like, "Oh no, no, no, no, no. I was just really lucky." All these ways of deflecting, of accepting a compliment. It's the same thing. And why do we do it? Because we don't want people to think that we like ourselves too much or think we're so great. And the idea is you should like yourself that much and you should think you're that great. Every one of us, I think most of us can relate to that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So is there, in the 10 years of doing this, a response that we can steal from you, that we can say the next time somebody says something nice to us or compliments us?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah. I mean, it's the same with no. "Thank you" is a complete sentence. I really started doing the "thank you," smile, and then shut up. It's really hard to do. It really is when you first start trying to do it because you say thank you and then you think, "Oh my God, what do they think I'm thinking?" You start to let your brain go in a panicked way. But "thank you," smiling, and shutting up is a great way of dealing with it. And the reality is, the conversation doesn't really continue after that. They accept, they've given the compliment, they feel good because you've accepted their compliment, and then things move on. Instead, when we do all this declaration of how not special we are, they start to think, "Maybe they're not that special." Why are you giving people reasons to discount you?
--:-- Mel Robbins: You just also had me see something else for the first time. So when you went like this, they give you the compliment. I envisioned that you had this big, beautiful—I'm giving you this beautiful gift, right? And when you go on, you basically show it back.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You basically say you're wrong. You give me a compliment, you're wrong. And that's really insulting to the person who gave you the compliment, and you are giving it back. I'm going to add to your "thank you." I'm going to say, we're all going to from now on in the Year of Yes challenge that we're all doing, say, "Yes, thank you."
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Oh, I like that. I like the "yes, thank you."
--:-- Mel Robbins: But yeah, that might even be harder. So at least start with "thank you" and a smile, and then move on to "yes, thank you" or "I'm so grateful that you said that."
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Let's take a second and just breathe. Because this is not just a conversation. It's a mirror. Shonda is handing out truth and I don't know about you, but I have a few people I love, actually more than a few people, who need this in their ears today. So while you text a link to this episode to that friend who's stuck, or to your sister who always puts herself last, or to your partner who's constantly criticizing themselves and playing small, Shonda and I are going to take a quick break. We're going to let our sponsors have a moment, and then we will be right back. And trust me, you don't want to miss where we're going next.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your buddy, Mel Robbins. And this conversation with Shonda Rhimes, holy cow, isn't this the wake-up call that so many of us needed? Let's go a little deeper, Shonda. Here's what I wanted to talk about next. One of my favorite chapters, I want to read to you from a chapter "Yes to Beautiful." This is from page 282 of your blockbuster book. Here we go: "The one thing I have learned is that I don't know anything. If someone had told me that on Thanksgiving morning in 2013 that I would be an entirely different person today, I would have laughed in their face. And yet here I am, 127 pounds thinner, several toxic people lighter, closer to my family, a better mother, a better friend, a happier boss, a stronger leader, a more creative writer. Oh, wow. A more honest person, both with myself and with everyone else in my life, more adventurous, more open, braver, and kinder to others, but also to myself. The cruelty with which I treated myself is no longer tolerated."
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can you talk a little bit about that? How do you stop being cruel to yourself?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I mean, it's a process. I think we're harder on ourselves than we are on anybody else in our lives. As mothers, we are brutal to ourselves, brutal to ourselves and very judgmental of our own behaviors. As friends, as a working woman, as a working man, we're all that much harder on ourselves than we would ever beat anybody else. We're happy to beat ourselves up and to celebrate everybody around us. And I think that learning how to treat yourself the way you would treat somebody else, even just a little bit, is a big step towards no longer being cruel to yourself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, maybe we should think about it like if you're really good at saying yes to everybody else, maybe the people pleasing should be focused on yourself.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Exactly.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Start trying to please yourself. That would be amazing if people started trying to please themselves. That doesn't make you selfish. It doesn't make you mean. It means that you're trying to look for the things that fulfill you and fill you up versus letting yourself be depleted and emptied because you're busy making other people happy. How do you model all of this kind of power and this ability to say yes for your daughters?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: We talk about it a lot in lots of ways. I say to them, when they are down on themselves, I'm like, "You're not allowed to talk about somebody like that that I love so much, but also that you love so much. We're not going to do that." Because I have tweens at this point. A lot of self-defeating talk happens when you're in that age where you're trying to figure out who you are.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: And I also make sure that they know what you have is special. Nobody else has this, no matter how many other people try. You need to protect it. The thing in you that makes you you, your job is to protect it. My youngest daughter used to say that she was "fitting out," not fitting in.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh my God.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: She came to me when she was three, and she was just in tears because her cousins were playing and she was like, "Mom, I'm fitting out. Everybody else is fitting in, but I'm fitting out." And so we turned that into something kind of great. I'm like, "Fitting out is something you want to do. Try to fit out as hard as you can." And that's the thing we talk about. We talk about fitting out, which is really just embracing yourself for who you are.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think that should be your next book. I mean, that is an incredible concept.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: No, I hadn't thought about that. Maybe it will be my next book. Or like a series. Because I mean, you clearly have another writer in the family with that sort of idea of fitting out at three. And it was such a perfect picture of what the world is when she said it, I went, "I completely understand that feeling." That feeling and defining it that way made it so clear. Fitting out. So I was like, "Fitting out's not bad. Fitting out is always good."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, and also if you think about it, there's all this research about how the brain is wired to fit in and that social rejection feels like physical pain in terms of where it is in the brain. So giving somebody a tool, because oftentimes when you say no to yourself, it's because you're trying to fit in with somebody else's agenda or fit in with somebody else's feelings. To not be different.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah, to not be different.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So when you say yes to yourself, you are actually saying no almost always to somebody else's expectations and you're saying no to fitting in just to fit in.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah. Wow. I always say at this point, I look at my girls and I have three of them. One's 23, one's 13, one's 12. But I look at them and I say, "Nobody's ever going to take advantage of them." They're very much their own people in the sense of if they don't want to do the big social thing everybody else is doing, if they don't want to do it, they don't do it. They're very clear on that. They're very clear on not trying to conform their looks to every other girl in the class. It's very nice to see.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wonder who they learned that from.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: But we've worked on it a lot. I think as a mother, that's the most important thing you can pass down to your kids is how to be themselves.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, you modeled it because you also in the book and through the year-long challenge of saying yes to the things that you're afraid of, that's what you're modeling. Because you model becoming yourself by saying yes to the things that you're scared to do and saying no to the things that feel itchy and suffocating and off. It's so genius and yet so easy to use.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I think it's a really simple tool. It really can be because even if you're not fully on board with the concept, even if you're like, "I'm not going to say yes to everything for a year," it's like once a week, say yes to something that you would normally not say yes to and see what it does for you. See if you like it, see what it changes, see how you push through your discomfort for it and see if it was worth doing. I think it's that easy.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Have you ever had a decision where you kind of didn't know the yes or no? And was there anything that you did to try to quiet all the noise and to really locate within you, "Is this actually a yes? Or is it fear and it's a yes? Or is the thing that I'm feeling complete unhappiness with the idea of doing..."
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes, yes. I mean, for me, I think in the beginning, I said yes so little that I don't think I even knew the difference. I really did. But you start to learn it. You start to realize that the things that are really bothering you, you know, it's all internal. I had this whole thing where I would panic about getting dressed and I would obsess about pieces of my body and it would take me hours to leave the house, which is just stupid at this day and age.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, it's stupid 10 years later, yeah.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: But at the time, it was paralyzing. I would be like, "I can't leave the house. I don't have anything to wear. I don't look good." And finding out what the yes was, I have this wonderful nanny named Jenny McCarthy, who I talk about in the book. Jenny once said to me, she said, "Shonda, you have to take your thighs with you everywhere you go, so you might as well love them." And it was that what I realized was I wasn't taking advantage of the idea of just saying yes to loving my body in whatever form it was in. Even though I thought I was that person, I clearly hadn't been doing that. And all of the fear and the anxiety of going out and something that I was like, "I don't know if my stomach looks okay or my leg," that went away somehow where I was like, "It has to go with me wherever I go. So might as well love it." It was a very strange yes, but it was a yes that worked.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I can see how it would. And you don't think of that as being the thing that you'd say yes to about being comfortable with your body. Like, I was like, "Maybe I should say yes to more sit-ups."
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: You're not thinking correctly. It's true.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I think we're so out of touch with ourselves, which is why I was like, "How do you get through?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I think you answered the question by saying, a lot of us aren't in touch. We're really not in touch with ourselves. We're busy living our routines.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And the things that have become comfortable to us. People do what works for them.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And in order to change something, you have to do something that steps out of what is working or not working, but you know what I mean, but what has kept your status quo.
--:-- You know, in one of the new chapters, you talk a lot about saying yes to finding home.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's talk about that because this is something I think so many people could benefit from. You know, and it'll sound not quite relatable in the beginning when I talk about it, but I was, you know, living in Los Angeles, running these shows, my own production company, living in a beautiful house that I had renovated from scratch, basically, and living this beautiful life. The pandemic hits, and I'm suddenly at home, like, not working. And I know that this happened for everybody.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: But I think we all had that weird realization that, like, I was like, I don't even know my own house. I don't even know what I'm doing. I haven't been home enough to really understand this. I've been home enough to really find out what was going on with my kids. And suddenly we're all at home all the time, right? For a lot of people, that was a really great awakening. And for me, it turned out to be a really great awakening, but it was preceded by like the biggest panic attack I'd ever had. I could not stop scrubbing my floors and making cleaning products. I was just trying to come up with something.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Something to do?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Some way to fill it, like whatever was going on. It was almost like I was trying to clean my brain, you know, that idea.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Is that why we rearrange our furniture in our houses all the time? We're actually rearranging our thoughts in our brain?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I think so. I think we're trying to see ourselves differently. I do think that. I really do think that. When you rearrange spaces, I think that's what that is.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: So at a certain point, I thought, like, I really hate it here. Like what I realized in that period of time was, is that the life I was living as beautiful and fantastic as it was to other people was not working. Like it just was not working. And I didn't feel at home in my own home. I didn't feel at home in my own city. I didn't feel like I was living in the best place in the world to raise my kids. I didn't feel like I was even doing my job correctly in a way that was giving me the chance to be a person and not just a working mother. And this is post year of yes. This is post my year of yes, where I thought I had it all figured out. When you suddenly discover you have nothing figured out. You've been following on your little rules that worked, but you've never stopped an exam, and are they still working? And I made the decision that we were going to move during the pandemic. And I think I used a lot as my excuse that there were going to be schools open where we were going. But we moved. I went to a place I'd seen twice, and then we moved there to the country in Connecticut.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Did everyone think you're crazy?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Everyone thought I was insane. My sister came along with me on the trip to look at houses to convinced me that I couldn't possibly move there.
--:-- Mel Robbins: We love your sister.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: And then she ended up buying a farm town over, like a little farmer town over and moving there too. My parents thought I was crazy. And then they moved there like six months later, I want to say it was, or maybe like a year later, they were like, you took our grandkids. And suddenly they were there. It turned out to be a great move, but it was really about having the courage to look at my life and go, this isn't working. Like, how am I going to create a life for myself that I'm going to be proud to be living?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to reflect back to what I think happened.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because as I've been hanging on every word and after devouring your book, what's very clear is that stopping with every decision and really just asking yourself for real, is this a yes? Is this saying yes to me or is this like a no to me? Like, is this saying yes to me or yes to somebody else? It starts small. It starts in the most kind of subtle surface level stuff. It really does. Is yes to the party? Or is it, you know what I'm saying? Like you just start to do it with the events and then you start to realize you've been saying no to your body. You've been saying no to your health. You've been saying no to your spirituality. You've been saying no to the way you want to live. And it just starts to go deeper and deeper and deeper. And the reason why you could have that awakening and recognize that you were itchy and a no in your own house is because you had started.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I had done the work from when I started on the outside and worked inward.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes. I think so. And you cannot convince me otherwise, Shonda, that you have such an extraordinarily amazing possibility for your life. Like as you're listening, as you're watching right now, there is a possibility for your life that is beyond your imagination right now. and you will not be able to connect to it until you start to scrape away at all the ways that you've been saying.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: All the things that are covering it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, yes.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: My father always says the only limit to your success is your own imagination. And he's right, but it's like getting to the place where we can actually see and hear our imagination at work in the way that it should be.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: It's really interesting. How we envision our world for ourselves is everything. And when you're so focused on saying yes to everybody else or allowing your fear to keep you from saying yes, you can't tap into that for yourself. You absolutely can't.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, because also you're on a path. Like I had my head down. I was trained. I was like, this is what I'm doing. And obviously it's working because everybody else is saying great job. And then being able to scrape away all of what everybody else expects, what everybody else thinks is right, what I've been afraid to admit to myself. You're really just left with this very simple, quiet voice that can tell you the truth about yourself.
--:-- Well, I love this vision of you. I can see, I can't see the kitchen, but I can see you on the floor. I can see you like scrubbing away, like, you know, just like something's wrong, something's wrong. And what I also love about the story is that there's something deeply spiritual about what you doing because most of us live our lives up in our heads were disconnected from our source of power in here And using this framework saying yes for a year to everything that scares you and allowing it to work its magic that is like taking up your time and energy, it helps you drop back into here, which allows you to hear the deeper voice.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I agree. I agree. It puts you back in your body in a way that I didn't expect at all.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How has your definition of success changed in the last 10 years based on the deeper connection that you have to what matters to you and who you are?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: You know, I used to say, and I used to say it jokingly, and then I stopped saying it jokingly. I used to say, I want to take over the world through television. And I used to say it jokingly in the beginning because I was too afraid to admit that that was kind of my goal. And then I sort of owned that as my goal. And then that became my only goal. And now I'm in a place now where I don't care about, like, that's not the point. The point is, is I want to really love what I'm doing while I'm doing it. I want to find joy in my work and in my life. You know what I mean? I want to feel like I'm dropped into everything. versus I'm just blindly pursuing a path. That has made a huge difference. And obviously, I'm lucky that I have the resources to do that. But I think it's for anybody, no matter what it is you're doing for a living, there is a way of looking at your life where you're thinking, the conversation I want to be having with myself has to be more fulfilling than I've been having. I want to be able to feel like I can lie in bed at night and feel proud of who I am. I want to treat myself with a lot more love. I think that for everybody is the bigger goal. And I don't think we have time or give ourselves a chance to really think about that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, and you talked early on about just when your life feels very small, that there is so much fear. And if you're listening or watching and you have that sense, like, Shonda, I want that, Shonda. Like, I want to have that awakening. But I do feel small. I do feel like I lie in bed and think about all the things that I want. and I know there's something more in store for me, but I'm scared to death to trust it and I don't even know how to start.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What would you say to that person?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: You know, we are far more capable than we give ourselves credit for. We really are. I never would have imagined that my life would change in this way. I really, I mean, it sounds crazy, but it's really true. I'm a completely different person than I was 10 years ago and a completely different person than I was a year before that when I wrote the book. It's how it happens. So what I would say to that person is you can start small. Just start with the idea of yes to talking to yourself like you matter. Even just the voice that you give yourself in your head, the way you treat yourself, even just try that. Start saying, I'm not a fearful person. I'm okay with this. The words that we say to ourselves is like casting a spell. After a while, you say them enough, they start to really mean something to you. You start to believe them and you start to live them. And so if you're giving yourself enough negative self-talk, that stuff becomes real after a while.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to make sure you just heard what Shonda Rhimes just told you. The words you say to yourself are like a spell. They really are. And I feel like the magic can be terrible that they work on you or it can be amazing. But the words you say to yourself start to become real to you the more that you say them. And the more you say yes to things that make you afraid, the more you discover the courage inside you and the bigger capability that you have that you're talking about.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Exactly. Doing the thing that you've been so afraid of generally undoes the fear.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, that's actually why you feel small.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah, exactly. Because you're so afraid and you can't make yourself do it. And by the way, the worst thing that can happen is that you fail. But you're already failing because you're not happy at all anyway.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How dare you talk to us like that, Shana? Like, you're calling us out on that. But you know, think about it. It's true.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah, you're already, this is already a failure. You're not living the life you want to live. So if that's the worst thing that can happen, it's what I said in the beginning. Like, at least you're going to get someplace different or someplace better. and anything is an improvement over the fact that you're feeling so small and so scared and so alone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, you also wrote in one of the new chapters about how, as you started to like have this expansion in your life and deeper connection to yourself, and as you started to change, not only did you recognize, wait a minute, I don't want to live here anymore. I'm going to move. But you also realize everything I do is related to work. I don't have hobbies. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? because I think that's really relatable.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I think it is too. It was really interesting to suddenly have the office taken away from me. And I'm still working remotely and doing things, but to suddenly have like that 24 hour, you know, adrenaline of, you know, these things have to happen, this taken away was a shock because I realized that without all of that, without all that office intrigue and work and things, I didn't have anything. You know what I mean? Like my kids were living a sufficient life. They'd become very comfortable with the fact that they'd come to see me at the office and that was good. But I realized that I didn't really have a life that I was living that I found happy. My whole life was work. My friends had become people who worked with me or for me. My whole life surrounded talking about the business and the industry. I didn't have any other conversations. And you think you're doing so great. I'd still been doing all my yeses, but I realized that all of them made me amazing at being a working mother, but I did not know how to be a mother who didn't know how to work.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah. I didn't know how to be that kind of mother, a mother with no work. It was very both humiliating and humbling to discover that I was literally a stranger in my own home.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And in your community, right?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: And in my community, for sure.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I can relate to that. So what do you want to say to the daughter who's listening right now who had that mom or the mom who's listening who's like, there goes the itchy brain and the shrinking thing. Like what?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I really want to say that I think that, you know, everybody's doing the best that they can. You do what you can when you can. And when you know better, you do better. I think that's Maya Angelou. But I think that that's really true. And so there's not a lot of time that you should spend dwelling on what did not happen for you. You know what I mean? Like that already, that's already occurred. So all you can do now, like I said, you have the opportunity to change it. So what matters is tomorrow. And for the daughter who had that mother, it can be a painful thing. But also remember, she was doing what she could do when she could do it and how she knew how to do it. Very few mothers are out there trying to hurt their kids on purpose. That's a whole other situation. But everybody's trying really hard. And I think that that idea of give yourself the grace to be upset that your mother was that person.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: But also remember that that was what your mother did. And if you're going to spend your rest of your life blaming your mother for who you are, then you've also decided to live a very small life.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Because you're not living your own.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What did you do once you had that realization? Because I can hear the person leaning in right now going, Shonda, okay, I am the story. I'm the character in that story. You know, I wasn't, I don't know. And for most people, packing up and moving across the country is not your answer.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Right. But for me, a lot of it was just like thinking about the mother I imagined I was, you know, the mother I imagined I could be.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: And figuring out ways to be more like that. You know, I'm never going to be the perfect cupcake baking, you know, I talk about that in the book, cupcake baking apron wearing mom who's like all there. But I can be the mother who makes sure that I'm spending, you know, the majority of my evenings with my kids and having conversations with them and figuring out their lives. It was little things.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What I also loved is that you also talked about hobbies.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And getting more intentional about friends.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Well, that was amazing to me to move to Connecticut and discover. Suddenly I had all this time on my hands. Moved to Connecticut and I realized I hadn't had a hobby in 30 years. It was like shocking to me. I had, you know, a child and shows almost at the same time. Grace and my daughter Harper are basically the same age. And then from the minute that happened, I didn't have a hobby again. I used to make jewelry. I have all these things in my house, no hobbies. And to suddenly discover that it had been like 20 something years or whatever, and I had not had a hobby once was crazy. And to then try to take one up was both embarrassing, but also really, really fun to discover. I took up golf as my hobby.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, why did you take up golf?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I took up golf because the same daughter who said she was fitting out came to me at nine years old and said, I would like to learn how to play golf.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: She's nine going on 45. She knows who she is.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I would say she's been here before. I love that.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: So she played golf for a year and I thought I would take lessons while she played. So I took lessons and she took lessons. And then at the end of that first year, she had won the country club's largest trophy and then turned to me and said, I quit. I'm done. That was great. But I don't want to play anymore. I'm not interested. But by that point, I was absolutely hooked because I loved the idea that I was doing something that I was no good at at all. And that my work was about, it was about the work you put into it and like what you get out of it is whatever your effort is. I love the patience that you learn by the whole situation of trying to just hit a tiny ball with a stick.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that. And you know what else I love is that the story of your daughter is saying yes and leaning in, right? To something because that feels like a yes to you. And then in the process of doing it, you get clear when it's a no. She was like, I like science and musical theater. This is not my jam. And I, you know, a lot of parents would have been like, we started playing golf. you're going to keep playing golf. But it was so clear that she, I mean, she came off the highest high, which is, you know, you win the big trophy, like you're in there and it wasn't fulfilling for her. And I absolutely understood what that felt like.
--:-- So you have one of the great new chapters in your book is saying yes to mentors.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How do you, like a lot of people right now are really struggling, especially with the current economy and the current kind of job. A lot of you are struggling right now. It's a very tough job market. A lot of people would love to have great mentors. How would you recommend someone think about saying yes to mentors or where to find them even?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Personally, so this for me was what happened is that I really thought there was something wrong with me when I was starting, you know, struggling. I thought like, nobody wants to be my mentor. You'd ask people, you'd look for people, you'd hope somebody noticed you. Nobody wanted to be my mentor. We're working in a business where I didn't look like anybody else who was doing my job. So it wasn't like there was a club I could join or a group of people I could find. And so I didn't have anybody. And I started to feel like this must mean a failing on my part.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Because basically what a lot of people do when they're looking for a mentor is they're just waiting for that person to tap them on the shoulder and say, you've got the thing. well I decided that I had to have myself on the shoulder and decide I've got the thing and so what I did was is I started reading books about people memoirs autobiographies about people who had done extraordinary things and really decided that those were going to be my mentors I was gonna take my lessons from those books and it was everything from Shoe Dog by Phil Knight to Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont to Becoming by Michelle Obama that was a recent one to Open by Andre Agassi completely different fields completely different industries but they were all people who had overcome things, who had had challenges, who practiced resilience. And I really tried to read those and take my lessons from those. And I decided those people were going to be my mentors.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that. It's free. You know what I mean? If you go to the library and get a library card, it's free. You can find your mentors anywhere. And the reality of it is, is you take those lessons, you put them together, and then you decide what matters for you. Right?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yes. You really learn from other people's experiences in a way that, I mean, honestly, the stuff in my book is far more intimate and complete than what you would get if you spent 15 minutes with me as your mentor, right?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh my, you will know Shonda Rhimes at a depth that you, like, especially for somebody who was so introverted just 10 years ago. Do you think your personality completely changed?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: My personality has completely changed. And I know that to be true because even the people who work with me, who've worked with me forever, have like quietly like scurried up to say like, you're a totally different person. And I am. I wouldn't have been able to do this interview. We wouldn't be having like such a calm, comfortable conversation. You would have been pulling teeth to get me to say anything before I'd written this book, before I'd had this experience.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Yeah. I actually think reading this book, if you're somebody that considers yourself introverted or you're somebody who has a tremendous amount of self-doubt and self-criticism, if you really leaned in and it felt like Shonda was describing you and she described how small life felt. I personally believe that this book will be the kind of wake-up call that you need in your life. And Shonda Rhimes will officially be your personal mentor. And when you read this story, you'll not only have a roadmap, but you will have a true story from somebody that was just as introverted and just as afraid and felt just as small as you.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: It's as small, as defeated, as isolated, and as alone. And that's the thing that I think is important. I don't care where you're coming from in life. That feeling, that horrible feeling, it's universal. It strikes everybody across all sectors. And I feel like that to me is that's where we're all joined. So we can all get out of it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I want to read page 367. This is part of all the new stuff. I mean, you've added so many new stories, seven new chapters. Here's what you write on page 367. "These past 10 years have reinforced to me that saying yes isn't just about conquering fears, though Lord knows I have conquered plenty. It's about understanding that fear isn't your enemy. Fear is information. Fear is your body's way of saying, hey, pay attention. Something important is happening here. The magic is not in the absence of fear. It is in what you choose to do while fear is sitting shotgun in your car, backseat, driving your entire life. You know what that's like. It's driving you right now. some yeses have been magnificent disasters, beautiful, spectacular failures that taught me more about myself than any success ever could. I've learned the difference between saying yes to growth and saying yes to prove something to people whose opinions should not matter in the first place."
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah, it's very true. It's very true. You call it, it's been a quiet revolution. I absolutely believe it's been a quiet revolution. And one of the greatest things about having this book, having written this book, and they come back to it 10 years later, is I've met so many interesting people who have come up to me and told me what they said yes to and how it changed their lives. I've met a woman who left an abusive relationship because she read this book. I've met women who started their own businesses. I've met people who said I love you to somebody that they would never have said it to before because they were too afraid. I've met people who become parents. I met people who quit their jobs or opened their own businesses. Like, I've been astonished to discover, because I really thought that this was my personal little way of working out my own problems.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I've been astonished to discover that everybody else, many other people have felt this way and have figured out a way around it and that the book was helpful. I did not necessarily write it to necessarily think I'm going to change other people's lives. I simply thought I'd changed mine and here's what happened.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, I wonder, have you thought at all about the difference in what you personally experience when somebody comes up and talks all about Bridgerton or all about this or all about that or about the other thing versus what it feels like for you, Shonda. When somebody says, I read The Year of Yes and I started saying yes and it changed my whole life. What does that feel like?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: It's a much more intimate feeling. You know, I love when people compliment our stories and I love when they compliment our characters, but the only other equivalent I can feel in that sense is when I meet young women who tell me that they're going to medical school because they saw Grey's Anatomy. That means we're making scientists, which I think is incredible. But when people come up and talk to me about the book, it really is like we've already had this intimate conversation and that they're responding to something, not just that I made up, but that I lived. So there is a real connection there that I feel connected to everybody who comes and says they love the stories, but there's a connection there that's very different and very personal and sort of strikes at the heart of why I'm so glad I changed and grew because I never would have experienced this before. I never would have had those connections.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that for you. I love that because it's actually, you're getting to experience what you wrote about in Say Yes to Mentors.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because when you see that second grade teacher that put their arm around you and saw a bigger possibility, you've now become that by changing yourself and being generous with that story. And more importantly, with the roadmap of how we could all do it, you've become that mentor and inspiration to the rest of us here in the world.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: I was going to say something self-deprecating, but I'm simply going to say thank you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're welcome. You're welcome. So if the person listening takes just one thing from this amazing amount that you've taught us and shared with us today. What do you think the most important thing to do is out of this conversation?
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: It's to believe that you have the possibility of changing your own life. I mean, I think that we lose that sometimes. We think I'm stuck here. There's no way out. The reality of it is the only person who can change your life is you. And the only person who's going to be disappointed if you don't change your life is you. So you might as well change or at least make the attempt.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well to that I say yes. Thank you, Shonda Rhimes. You're extraordinary. This has been a wonderful conversation.
--:-- Shonda Rhimes: Well thank you for coming all the way to Boston to have it. Glad to be here.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I also want to thank you. Thank you for making the time, finding the time to be here with me. And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you and your ability to create a better life. Alrighty, I will see you in the very next episode. I will be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, today you're going to hear one of the most personal interviews Shonda has ever given. And Shonda is going to tell you if you feel, but it's not an escaping it. It's learning to lean into it. It's in saying yes to it. It's in saying yes to it. Okay. Of the global media company, Shondaland. She is the first woman. Oh, okay. She took, she has also written a book about, she has also written a New York Times bestselling book. She has also written a New York Times bestselling book about, so while you text this episode to that friend who's stuck or your sister who always puts herself last or, you know, the white or your partner who's constantly playing small. I thought I was going to have more. I don't think I managed my food correctly today either. 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.
