The High 5 Habit: Take Control of Your Life with One Simple Habit

by Mel Robbins

Meaningful Mantras I deserve to feel good today. I am an awesome person.

This is teaching me something I need to know. Today is going to be a good day. I am enough just as I am. I will figure this out.

This scares me and I’m doing it anyway.

The world needs my story. I am growing every day. I choose to focus on what I can control. This moment is temporary. If I put in the work, it will happen.

One of the most effective ways to change your opinion of yourself is to tap into a body of research called Behavioral Activation Therapy. It’s a simple but profoundly effective therapeutic method that asserts: Act like the person you want to become, no matter how you feel right now.

In any area of your life where you feel jealous, you’re going to flip it into inspiration: Current Limiting Belief: If somebody else has it, I can’t. Flip It: Their success is just proof that I can have it too.

Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. Here are a few questions that can help you flip your jealousy into inspired action—because you need that high five: Who are you jealous of? What is it about these people and what they are doing, or what they have, that calls to you? Which parts are you inspired by? Which parts do you not like? How would you tweak it to make it your own? What is the negative thought (or thoughts) that have kept you from allowing yourself to pursue it?

As a people pleaser, I will do anything to manipulate your emotional reaction. I use the word manipulate on purpose, because I knew it would bother you. People pleasers think they’re being “nice.” Nope, we’re liars. If you’re a people pleaser, you will behave in a way to manipulate what somebody thinks about you. That’s why you spend most of your energy curating yourself so that you fit in, or will be liked, or so that no one’s mad at you. You are manipulating what people think about you. Instead of just showing up as yourself and making decisions that work for you, you twist yourself (or your renovated playroom, in this case) in knots so that other people won’t be upset with you.

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Procrastination and perfectionism are the two deadliest dream killers. They aren’t a high five—energetically, they’re a hell no! They slowly choke your ambitions to death until one day you wake up disappointed and resentful when you realize, I never even got started. First, let’s get one thing straight: You’re not a procrastinator or a perfectionist or an overthinker. You’re just scared.

I’ve been coaching people for a decade, and I’m telling you, there are two kinds of people: People who see obstacles and people who see opportunity.

There’s a quote I love: “The price of your new life is your old one.”

Those three words I’m safe. I’m okay. I’m loved are magic. Because as long as you are alive and can say those words to yourself—it is true. In the moment, you are safe. You are okay. And you are loved.

Visualize yourself running in the rain. Here’s how it works: If you want to manifest a big dream of running the Boston Marathon, yes, write that dream down every day. To achieve it, however, don’t visualize yourself crossing the finish line and the roaring applause of the crowd. Visualize yourself lacing up your running shoes when it’s 10 degrees out. Close your eyes, and picture what it’s going to feel like to be out there running mile 13 on your own because your earbuds just ran out of batteries. Feel in your body the sensation of your alarm going off at 5 a.m., and you’re exhausted, and you look out the window and see it’s pouring—and you start running in the rain. If your dream is to run a business that brings in six figures a month, don’t visualize the money hitting your account. Visualize what it feels like to be writing a blog post, exhausted, at midnight, after the kids are asleep. Close your eyes and feel, with every fiber of your being, hanging up the phone after being told NO on yet another sales call. Then see yourself pick up the phone and dial the next number.