How to Find Your Purpose & Design the Life You Want

Mel Robbins (00:00:07):

You are about to do something stupid.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:00:11):

The opposite of the most painful thought in your head is your next step toward awakening. I would say you're about to do something really brilliant. Feel that? Yes, we're going to do time travel, so it's 2034. You're going to wake up on a day that is an ordinary day in a perfect life. What do you hear?

Mel Robbins (00:00:32):

I hear waves and I hear little kids laughing.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:00:35):

Look at the room. Look for the pictures that have been taken in the years between 2024 and 2034. Two weddings.

Mel Robbins (00:00:45):

Wow,

Dr. Martha Beck (00:00:45):

Grand babies. Can you feel that you are creating this future as we go through this? You are out of anxiety and into imagination and the tears in your eyes, tell me it's real. Yeah, you're finding your purpose right now.

Mel Robbins (00:01:06):

Thank you for changing my life. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am thrilled that you're here. 

(00:02:52):

Dr. Martha Beck is a world renowned life coach who holds three sociology degrees from Harvard. She's a six time New York Times bestselling author. She's famously known as Oprah's life coach, and she's also been my life coach for 19 years. But from afar, and this is the very first time that I'm meeting her in person. Through her books, her conversations, she has helped me get clear about what I want and has inspired me to take bigger and more purposeful risks. And she's here for you to share her best tactics, tools, research and insights that are going to help you have the breakthrough that you need and deserve. So please help me welcome the extraordinary Martha Beck to the Mel Robbins podcast. I just have to say, I am unbelievably thrilled that you're here. I can't believe that I'm sitting across from you. Actually

Dr. Martha Beck (00:03:42):

Pinch me, pinch me.

Mel Robbins (00:03:43):

I feel the same way. I feel like I know you because you've been in my life for so long, and I just am eternally grateful that you got on a plane and you are taking the time to be with me and the person who's listening.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:03:59):

Wow, I am so honored to be here. And it's like we're just looking in the mirror here because we've both had parasocial relationships with each other. I feel like you're talking to me all the time, and it's just such an honor to be here.

Mel Robbins (00:04:16):

I am so excited that you're here because there are just so many different topics that I cannot wait to learn from you about, from how you find your deeply personal sense of purpose to how you can use the tools that you write about in your new book to manage anxiety to learning how to live a life that's truly authentic to you. And I've thought a lot about how I wanted to start our conversation, and I'd like to start it by telling you a personal story. So it would've been early 2005, and I was a young mom with two, and I had left the practice of law, and I had studied and become a life coach, and I had a small business coaching individuals and people that ran small businesses, and Oprah Winfrey was doing a big event, and it was at the Boston Convention Center.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:05:13):

Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:05:15):

And I thought, well, what better place to go to prospect for clients who feel stuck than at an Oprah Winfrey conference? And I walked in and I sat down in a chair and a woman that I had never seen walked on stage and she started talking and it was you. Oh my goodness. And there was something about you, and I don't even know what the hell you were saying. You were talking about purpose. And I remember just feeling the stress of having two kids and trying to grow this business. And my husband had just been laid off and he wanted to go into the restaurant business. And you were up there and there was something inside me and you talk. I'd never thought about it as peace,

(00:06:07):

But everything went quiet. And I don't even remember a word that you said, but I remember feeling, I want to be doing that, and I didn't even know what that meant. And so when you walked off stage, I picked up one of the magazines and I learned about you, and I started reading your column and I said to myself, I'm going to just figure out how I can write books or how I can speak to people. And this was before I gave that TEDx talk. Amazing. It was before I had ever done anything. Wow. And it was you.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:06:48):

That's incredible.

Mel Robbins (00:06:49):

And I remember I was sitting there one night and somebody forwarded me an email and I was up late at night kind of working, and the kids had been put to bed, and this email comes across my inbox, and it's from a friend. And she said, Hey, Mel, I work in New York and I see that somebody is looking to interview a life coach for an article in this magazine. So I scroll down and I notice, oh, well this is two months old, and oh, I have none of the credentials. And oh, it looks like the deadline's already passed. And then I said, well, what would Martha Beck do? And I hit reply and I responded, and it was the kind of beginning of everything changing in my life, and it all began with that moment that I had an experience with you.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:07:51):

Oh my goodness.

Mel Robbins (00:07:51):

And I've been waiting 19 years to meet you.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:07:55):

Oh, my heart is just exploding right now. I remember going out in front of crowds and I had terrible performance anxiety, but I would always stop and think Somebody out there feels the way I did once,

(00:08:09):

And I would just think whoever it is, and I'd just say, please speak to them. And I don't know what the hell I said either, but it's like throwing a message out in a bottle and just wondering, did anyone pick it up? And then to have you say, I found the message you left in the bottle and I picked it up. And then you come back to me and it's an answer to my prayers to feel heard and seen, the way we all want to feel heard and seen, and talk about full circle moments. This whole day has been just this deep magic. And I really, I love you for bringing that to life and putting it out into the world.

Mel Robbins (00:08:48):

Well, I love you for starting the spark, and one of the reasons why I was so excited beyond just my selfish desire to have the full circle moment and to meet you and thank you, is that you, more than anybody in the world, helps people get unstuck.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:09:08):

Oh, wow.

Mel Robbins (00:09:09):

It's true. So much of your work is truly about finding purpose

(00:09:15):

And learning how to find your way, especially when you have no peace, especially when you don't know what comes next or life is thrown something at you. Can you just expand a bit about your personal background and how you got to the point where you were writing all of these New York Times bestselling books because there was a lot of personal history that led up to where you are now. I would just love for you to share a little bit about your background in case the person listening is getting the gift of meeting you for the first time.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:09:48):

Oh, hello. It's so nice to meet you. Yeah, I was privileged enough to have some fairly difficult things in my life, and one of the hardest, probably the hardest was growing up in the heart of very Mormon Mormonism with a father who was one of the great luminaries of the Mormon faith. He defended the faith, it's called being an apologist. So he was very important to Mormonism, and I think it made him crazy. And part of his crazy was that he sexually abused me. And then I grew up, and after I was having children and trying to not tell any lies the moment I decided one year not to tell any lies, the memory of the abuse just erupted. If you've had that happen to you call someone you need community.

Mel Robbins (00:10:47):

So you had suppressed all of the memories of it, and then it erupts. Yeah. You were actually at Harvard at the time, right?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:10:54):

Yeah, I was finishing my PhD. But yeah, I mean, it literally, I had so much scar tissue in my body. 

(00:12:34):

How I Left The Mormons and Found My Faith because it was about how I had been set free by the experience of dealing with that. And that lo and behold, I decided I believed that there was a divine consciousness that loves us all and is always taking care of us. So when that book came out, yeah, my family tried to take legal action to have me put in prison. I lost every friendship I'd had growing up because everyone was Mormon in that community and growing against the church and leaving the church is considered the only sin worse than murder.

Mel Robbins (00:13:11):

Well, and you not only did that, but to live in your integrity and to live your truth and to set yourself free, you also wrote about it.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:13:22):

Yeah. That's

Mel Robbins (00:13:22):

A book that became a massive New York Times bestseller. I

Dr. Martha Beck (00:13:26):

Was hoping no one would read it. I knew I had to write it, but I was terrified. And pretty much all the things that I thought would happen happened. My publishers called me after the galleys came out and said, why didn't you tell us about this? And I was like, I tried. They were like, we're getting death threats. I was like, yeah, I know. Don't rock the boat in any very strongly committed ideological community. Right? Yeah. So it was just loss after loss, after loss, after loss. There was immense fear. There was fear for my children whose lives were threatened anonymously by people sending me letters and stuff, had to leave my home. At the same time, realized I didn't really like academia, so I left my job and realized I was gay. So there went my marriage, it just, everything left and everything arrived, everything painful. That was so hard to lose. I had to let them go. And in the spaciousness that opened up the thing I call God moved in, and there's just joy, joy, joy, joy in letting go. I that for all of us. I do too. I want that so much. I want that for every single person. I want that so much for you. Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:14:59):

How did you go from that experience in your life and in your career and in your marriage and publicly to then making this decision that you would put yourself out there even more and help everyone else find their way? Because you have, and your work represents around the world, a pathway towards purpose, a way to find your authentic self, a way to truly find the courage to speak your truth. I mean, that's what you represent in the

Dr. Martha Beck (00:15:37):

World. Oh, thank you. We're in Boston. I haven't been back to Boston for 30 years.

Mel Robbins (00:15:43):

Really?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:15:44):

Yeah. And I was living in Cambridge, which is right here when my son was prenatally diagnosed with Down Syndrome. So I was six months pregnant. I knew he had Down syndrome, and I had never really experienced peace. And I was very, very upset. And I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't sleep. And I remember being in my apartment in Cambridge, curled over my big pregnant belly, which terrified me. I didn't know what was going to happen to my life and to him. And I was under such a weight of grief that I did something. And your new book is perfect because I just allowed what was happening to happen.

(00:16:28):

I said, let the world be what it is. Let this child be what it is. And I sort of collapsed forward, and I swear to God, I felt arms go around me in that moment, and it was as if something picked me up and I was curled on the floor, but I felt as if I'd been picked up like a baby and held. And I don't know what that was, but it was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. And I don't know how long it lasted because it felt outside of time and it was just overwhelming. And after it ended, my entire life was about I have to get back there. And that is to this very day what I'm doing here.

Mel Robbins (00:17:11):

Well, and that's the work that you do with people around the world. I try. Well, I think you succeed in helping us come home to ourselves.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:17:19):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:17:20):

I can't believe you haven't been back to Boston.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:17:22):

Yeah, it was a difficult city for me.

Mel Robbins (00:17:25):

Yeah. Well then, or at least you haven't been around. You haven't been back to Cambridge.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:17:30):

I did today. And it was really,

Mel Robbins (00:17:32):

What was that like?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:17:34):

Oh, everywhere I went, I was tapping my younger self on the shoulder. I was there from the time I was 17 until I was like 28, and I would just tap my younger self on the shoulder and say, Hey, I'm from your future, and I know with a hundred percent accuracy, you're going to get through this and you're going to be happy. And I just kept telling my younger selves that all morning, going around with my wonderful partner. It was time travel, it was magic. I had three social science degrees from Harvard, and what they taught, they taught me, well, it was a brutal education, but one thing was very true, and that is I'm a social scientist By training, you can't really know what another person's life is like for them.

(00:18:19):

So the only truth story you can tell is your own never presumed to tell another person's story. If I'm going to speak the truth, I speak it from my own experience because I will not impose that on you. But if you're invited to come share if you feel the same thing. But that's why I had to tell my own story, because standing on some pedestal and saying, I know these things because I'm a social scientist, bullshit. I know I found the way out of suffering because I was suffering horribly. Here's the path I followed. If it feels good to you, come with me. I love you. Good luck.

Mel Robbins (00:18:54):

And what's available to the person listening right now or to somebody that they love, if they're suffering deeply in this conversation today?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:19:05):

Today, you're okay right now. Mel and I were here. We got you. There is a community of love. It's invisible, but if you feel it with your senses in your heart, something will start to shift. Got you. And it's going to be okay just this moment, a breath at a time.

Mel Robbins (00:19:24):

We got you. I believe you. Yeah, it's true. And I also believe that you're going to walk us through exactly how we can believe it for ourselves too.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:19:36):

That's my dream.

Mel Robbins (00:19:38):

That's the dream. Well, that's what we're going to do today. And so I would love to have you just talk a little bit about how you think about the experience of being stuck in life and even moments in your life where you have felt stuck. And we'll just start there.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:19:57):

Oh yeah. Well, the story I just told you, I felt completely and totally stuck. I mean, my advisors at Harvard, even the doctors told me I was throwing my life away by keeping my son. And I'm very pro-choice, by the way. But he was diagnosed a week before my sixth month. I had already really bonded to him. So I felt stuck then. And here's the thing, the release came from a surrender to what was, but then being caught by some force, that is not something we really talk about in our culture. And over and over in my life when I've gotten stuck, when I was the daughter of one of Mormonism most famous defendants, and then I'm dealing with memories of sexual abuse and the whole religion is vested in keeping me quiet. I felt very stuck then. And when my whole family and all the friends I'd had as a child sort of wrote me off, and I've never spoken to them again, I felt very stuck.

(00:20:58):

But I've come to have a really delightful relationship with the feeling of being stuck. 

Mel Robbins (00:22:12):

It's so hard to do though. And you literally coach people through this. And I think about moments in my life where I've felt so stuck and also directionless, right? I don't know what I should be doing next. And so could you speak directly to the person who's listening that feels that right now they're not only feeling that frustration, and is this all my life is going to be in the sense that there's something else, but I don't even know how to access it?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:22:42):

Yep.

Mel Robbins (00:22:42):

Okay.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:22:43):

So two things. You have two best friends that go with you everywhere. One is your body. The other is suffering, and these are your allies. And our culture really discounts both of them. We need to get a little wilder, as I say in my little online community called wilder. And the way you get wilder is you sink into the body and you feel for suffering. So if you wouldn't mind, I don't do hypothetical work, so I want you to just work it on you. So what I do with myself and what I would do with you if I were coaching you,

Mel Robbins (00:23:13):

Let's do it.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:23:14):

I would say in this moment, is there anything in you that is not peaceful?

Mel Robbins (00:23:18):

Yes.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:23:18):

Okay. Where in your body do you experience most of the not peace.

Mel Robbins (00:23:24):

I feel it as like this tension in my chest. It's right between my breasts. It's almost like this like plate right in here.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:23:33):

Yeah. Okay. And when you start to describe it, you actually will be using the language of the body. This tells everyone in the world, no matter what language they speak. Ah, we've all felt that. Ah, yes. The armoring of the heart, the flinching away. When you focus on that, what emotion comes up, and there are four categories, fear, mad, sad, glad and scared. Scared. Okay, so breathe into that. So now you have your friend suffering saying, I'm afraid. And you have your friend body saying it doesn't need words. Ah, okay. This is helping you find your way through life. So the first thing you do is in your phrase, let it be. Let the emotion be bigger. Just

Mel Robbins (00:24:21):

Let the fear, the scaredness be there.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:24:24):

Let it be huge. Let it fill your internal space. Let it leak over into the world. Let that plate armor in your chest really, really get as big as it wants to be.

Mel Robbins (00:24:37):

It's like a nuclear

Dr. Martha Beck (00:24:38):

Cloud now.

Mel Robbins (00:24:39):

Okay, fantastic. Now it's like,

Dr. Martha Beck (00:24:42):

Yeah, okay, let it. You should write another book called What Happens When You Relax into It is you're no longer resisting. The lesson that is coming from your fear is another word for anxiety. So it's coming from your anxiety. It's coming from life circumstances. So now, if that were a being you loved and you asked it, first of all, say, be yourself. I have no resistance to you. Come in, sit down with me.

Mel Robbins (00:25:15):

The suffering.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:25:15):

Yes,

Mel Robbins (00:25:16):

Be huge. Be yourself, be huge. Be scary. I have zero resistance to this.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:25:22):

And then this will take too much time for the broadcast. But you say to yourself, tell me everything. Write it all down. Tell me everything you're feeling.

Mel Robbins (00:25:32):

What's interesting about inviting the suffering in as a person and taking the feeling in your body and visualizing it into something bigger is the second that you said that the kind of tension in the chest mushroomed into this nuclear cloud, which ironically made it feel smaller.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:25:55):

Well, look at the amount of energy you had compacted into your chest when you let it go. There's a kind of release.

Mel Robbins (00:26:03):

Yes.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:26:04):

You're not having to hold all that pain anymore. You're just letting it be.

Mel Robbins (00:26:08):

And what ended up happening, because this is a particular fear about something going on in my financial life, is that the second that I kind of imagined it big and you invited it in to sit with me, it immediately started talking.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:26:23):

Oh, really?

Mel Robbins (00:26:23):

Yes. And it brought me right back to 15 years ago when I was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:26:30):

Really?

Mel Robbins (00:26:31):

And I'm afraid because I've been in a place where I've felt out over the tips of my skis. I've been in a place where I've been really scared and struggling financially, and it's not at all the same situation, but it's triggering.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:26:46):

Yes, it

Mel Robbins (00:26:46):

Is.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:26:47):

If we were working this in person, I would have you write down or tell me every thought that is causing suffering. Because here's the thing, there are two sources of suffering. One is clean and one is dirty. The clean suffering is like if I punched you in the head, it would hurt. That's just clean suffering. But dirty suffering comes from our thoughts about events. So then you would think, she hates me. Why does she do that? Did I deserve it? She shouldn't have done that. So there would be this storm of thoughts, and we all have different storms, but most of our pain, most of our suffering doesn't come from events. It comes from our thoughts about events. So as your pain tells its story, you are unblending from it, and you said it's not the same situation at all. You're able to see that. That means you have a little perspective, but don't shut it down. Don't say, oh, you don't need to worry. This is different. No, suffering is your ally. It will tell you everything you need if you let it speak. And I'm going to ask you, because you're good at this stuff. Tell me one of the scariest thoughts that comes up when you let your fear speak,

Mel Robbins (00:28:00):

That you've just spent 15 years getting yourself out of financial debt and making yourself feel safe because you've been really good about savings, and you are about to do something stupid.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:28:18):

Okay, I'm going to boil that down to you're about to do something stupid, and all the alarm is attached to it, right?

Mel Robbins (00:28:24):

Yes.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:28:26):

Here's the deal. Here's how suffering is your friend. It always tells you the opposite of what you actually need to know. So it's very specific. It's not just, oh, let it go. It'll be fine. That thought that the more suffering it causes, the more it's getting your attention. But it's backwards.

Mel Robbins (00:28:47):

So I can't even wrap my brain around this. I'm like, wait, so what is backwards about? It's about to, I would say you've spent all this

Dr. Martha Beck (00:28:55):

Time getting yourself out of debt, and now you're about to do something really brilliant. Feel that? Yes. Yeah. The opposite of the most painful thought in your head. The opposite of that thought is your next step toward awakening.

Mel Robbins (00:29:13):

Oh my God, that's beautiful. It always works. Can we try that with a breakup?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:29:18):

Yes, please.

Mel Robbins (00:29:19):

So I watched my daughter go through just a wildly painful heartbreak this summer. Ouch. And the biggest fear is that it was too. It was like, I'll never find love again, or I've made a huge mistake and I blew it. And so if we take this truth and wisdom and you invite the suffering in, and let's just take the statement that a lot of people feel, i'll never find love again. I'll never find somebody who loves me. What is the opposite of that?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:29:54):

So you have to really listen to the suffering till the point where you're sick of it, because before that, you're going to cling to this thought.

(00:30:02):

It's part of your ego trying to defend itself. But as we know, trying to clinging to things to defend yourself is the way into misery. So I'll never find love again. It will sound radical, but the opposite would be, I will always find love again. Now, if you sit with that and start to look for ways, it could be true. Oh, I will always find love. I love that tree outside the window. I love my cat. I love my mother. I love, oh, there's just love everywhere. When you say, I'll always find love, I'll find it everywhere. Everything starts to love you back. Try this, try this. Go into a coffee shop or someplace you like to go to have lunch. Go in thinking your most painful thought. I'll never find love again. I'll never find love again, and watch how people react to you. Okay, the next day, go in again. But this time you have to repeat the opposite. I'll always find love everywhere. I'll always find love everywhere. And watch how people react to you. They will open doors for you. They will give you free stuff. They will smile. I'm telling you, people talk about me being woo woo. It's just what happens.

Mel Robbins (00:31:14):

Go test it. Well, I also think there's a lot of science to this. There is, yeah. Because aren't you training your mind to show you what you're looking for if you're, Arent you more open to it? Is that also because I believe in both the magic and the spiritual and the woo woo, and you can explain it, and you do in your work over and over again about how this is also a tactic to reprogram your spirit and your brain to be open to this

Dr. Martha Beck (00:31:42):

Selective attention. You've probably seen that experiment where they have six people bouncing a basketball and you tell someone watching the film count the times they bounce the ball in the middle of the film, A person in a gorilla suit comes in and does a little dance and then leaves. And people watching that film don't see the gorilla because they're busy watching the times. The ball bounces, and the gorilla is not subtle. It is right in the middle of the frame. It's big. We don't see what we don't pay attention to. So if you are constantly saying, I'm not going to find love, I'm not going to find love, the only things you'll see will be things that make you jealous and hurt and sad. And if you walk around thinking, I'm going to see love everywhere, always it happens. The other thing is mirror neurons, other people's brains. If you took a sip of water, my brain would actually have the same activity in it as if I had taken a sip of water. Our brains are constantly moving to reflect one another. So when you walk around going, there's love everywhere. A person meets your eyes and suddenly sees love everywhere. You're giving them a different brain by going around thinking I'll always find love.

Mel Robbins (00:32:55):

Just everything that comes out of your mouth is like, oh my God, I felt my chest collapse. Almost like falling backwards, like a trust fall. When you said you're about to make the most brilliant decision, and I think you're right. Look how

Dr. Martha Beck (00:33:13):

Aware you are. Look how experienced you are. Of course you're going to make a brilliant decision.

Mel Robbins (00:33:17):

But what I love about this conversation is that when you see somebody that you care about who's stuck or going through heartbreak or who is afraid because they're taking a risk, when we see that person from the outside, we credit them and give them the benefit of all the things we know to be true, which is, yes, this is breaking your heart in a million pieces, and there's love all around you, and there is love in your life, and you will absolutely find love again and you will be loved. But it's hard for you as the person stuck in it is being stuck different than not having a purpose. Or

Dr. Martha Beck (00:34:02):

How do you, they're very related because the biggest reason people consult me is a sense of losing, of not having a purpose. And they'll put that above things like heartbreak or disease. Not having a purpose is really a big problem, and it's really related to being stuck because our knowledge of the direction we want to take is informed by a sense of purpose. And when we don't have a sense of purpose, we have no way of knowing where to go. And that gets us stuck. I do seminars in Africa, and one of the things we do is we take people rhinoceros tracking because that's an obvious thing to do, right? If you don't have a sense of purpose, the rhinoceros is your purpose. You learn to see every sign, it leaves on the earth and everything. And then we take them back to the camp and we say, now you're going to track your purpose. The way we track the rhino and the way the track of your purpose is joy in the body, a sense of joy, lifting or lightness, relaxation in the body is a track. And it never says, here's what you're going to be in 20 years or even 20 minutes. It says, here's your next step forward. So with this financial situation, you're about to make a brilliant decision. How does that, if you say that, what happens in your body?

Mel Robbins (00:35:23):

I feel that freedom and peace and ease that

Dr. Martha Beck (00:35:26):

You talk about. So the Buddha used to say, and he said it a lot, wherever you find water, you can know if it's the ocean, because no matter what it looks like, the ocean tastes of salt. And when you find enlightenment, you will always recognize it no matter what it looks like. Because enlightenment always tastes of freedom, not giddy joy, not bliss freedom. It can be scary as hell to serve your purpose, but it's free. You are free. So when you say you felt lighter and freer, that's a track. So now that that's what you're going to follow, instead of the thing that says, oh my God, I'm going to make a terrible decision,

Mel Robbins (00:36:10):

Or I'm always going to be alone, or it's never going to work out for me, or I'm never going to be good enough. That is one lane. And using these tools, you're now accessing and flipping the suffering,

Dr. Martha Beck (00:36:21):

And you're tracking what brings you more freedom in the body, more joy in the body. So if you're making the decision, okay, I'm going to put this money in this account, or in that account, literally sit there and say, okay, if I make decision A, what happens in my body? Shut down. If I make decision B, what happens in my body a little bit lighter?

Mel Robbins (00:37:28):

Purpose different?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:37:29):

Yes,

Mel Robbins (00:37:30):

Absolutely. Oh, you said that with such certainty.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:37:32):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:37:33):

Yeah. It's as individual as our fingerprints. And

Dr. Martha Beck (00:37:36):

How do you define purpose? That which brings you the greatest satisfaction and joy as a being on this earth. And it allows you to contribute the most satisfaction and joy to the rest of the world. That's your purpose. It's where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet A theologian said that once, I think it was Fred Ner.

Mel Robbins (00:37:59):

And how do you discover this? You talked about the rhino hunting. And then you take people back and say, okay, we're going to do that exact same process. Do you look backwards and start to look for tracks and clues in your past, or do you look forward?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:38:16):

Well, you do. You realize what feels like the way forward and what is not the way forward.

(00:38:21):

And it's really simple. If it sets you free even a little bit, go there. That's your purpose. If it traps you, if it makes you feel encased, no matter how slightly that is, what my friend Boyd, who tracks with me calls the track of not there. So we go through life banging into suffering and oh my God. And that is just the track of not there. After you learn to track joy, you won't even pay much attention to all of that noise. You'll be so focused following your joy, and then you'll look up and go, oh my God, that's where I'm headed. Think of your story of being in the audience at the O commit to.

Mel Robbins (00:39:02):

Well, I am so glad we're going there because I have been stuck so many times in my life, and a lot of times, and I know you find this with people too, when you're stuck, you're stuck and you're pretty convinced you are and you're scared, you're going to stay there. And when you hear somebody like you say, we got to track your joy. You got to move toward freedom. When you're that stuck, it's sort of like, what the hell does that even mean? I can barely get out of bed. I don't like the job that I have. I can't pay my bills. And that's kind of where I was when I was sitting in that audience, and you gave me a taste of that, oh, there's something that feels different here. I'm going to move toward this. And the simple tool I came up with was, what would Martha Beck do? And I'll just do that because the woman has life that feels different than mine. And so I'm going to just kind of move toward that. Even though I don't even know what she would do, I'm just going to guess what she would do.

(00:40:03):

And so if the person listening is in it with us, and they're also like, okay, yeah, but what do I do when I wake up? What do I do in my life right now to find these small pockets of joy in my day? Because I'm assuming that's where you start.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:40:22):

No, actually, it's not in the day.

Mel Robbins (00:40:25):

Oh, thank God.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:40:25):

It's always in this moment, and it's always inside the self. There is no such thing as a circumstance that will set you free. All your feeling of captivity is always coming from the mind, from the fear-based mind when you set yourself free in your mind. I was bedridden for 12 years with a whole bunch of autoimmune diseases, a lot of which they told me were incurable and progressive. I don't have any symptoms. But that didn't start after. For 12 years, I was in constant chronic pain and severe disability. I raised my kids on a king-sized bed, and I felt very, very stuck. And then I realized that the feeling of being stuck was torture and that I could shift the feeling. So it always starts, what am I thinking? I'm thinking, I'm stuck. I'm stuck. There's nowhere to go that causes suffering. What's the opposite?

(00:41:24):

I'm free. I'm free. I could go in any direction and then find a way in which that may be true, even if you just find one little mode of it in what looks like a sea of pain. Once I got on a plane and I was at the airport and this guy started talking to me, he was a professional hockey player, he said, here's the thing, the net is small and the goalie is big in hockey, but you can't ever look at the goalie. You look at the five little spaces where the putt can go because where your eyes go, the putt goes. So I get on the plane and the guy beside me says, I'm a whitewater rafter. And lemme tell you, there are times when it just looks like all rocks and just a little tiny bit of water, but you never look at the rocks because where your eyes go, the boat goes.

(00:42:15):

I was like, okay, something's happening. I get off the plane, I go take a horse riding lesson, and my teacher says, always, look where you want the horse to go, where your eyes go, the horse goes. And I was just like, I get it. I get it where my attention goes, my life goes. If you feel stuck, I'm there for you. Tell me everything. And when you're done telling me everything, I'll say, where are you free? And when I started finding the places I was free one by one, these incurable symptoms disappeared. I'm 61 last month I went on a walk in England and I walked 75 miles in six days after being told I'd never walk again. It's because I know how this thing works and we can use it to lock us down or we can use it to set us free no matter what

Mel Robbins (00:43:15):

Were some of the little things when you started doing this for yourself after being bedridden for 12 years, that were pockets of freedom for you, just to give the person listening a sense of what you're talking about?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:43:29):

I started looking at the things that hurt most because it was like having knives stuck in me, these thoughts that I thought, and everybody has these, I'm not good enough people. This person doesn't love me. Life is a bitch. And then you die, whatever it was, I'd be like, life is a bitch, and then you die. All right, I'll never get out of this bed that hurts. I'll always get out of this bed. That can't be true. I'm lying. Wait, wait. I can read a book and be a million miles away. I can watch a show in space travel. I can talk to a friend and feel everything they're feeling and be at the dance where they're dancing. And I am free because the human imagination can do anything. That's where my attention went, and that's where my life went because everything else just hurt too much.

Mel Robbins (00:44:26):

How long did it take? I'm sitting here asking these questions on behalf of the skeptic. You want to believe that it's going to work, right?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:44:35):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:44:35):

But your mind is so against you at times that even when you get these little morsels where you feel like it is true, if I watch a movie, I'm no longer in this bed because my mind is in the movie. And it's a small way to find freedom. And as I start to unshackle myself from these painful thoughts and I bring freedom into my experience, things open up.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:45:00):

And the thing to notice is just does it feel a little bit better? Does it feel a little bit freer? What's happening when people feel stuck is, and I don't want to get all brain sciencey, but honest to God, there's a little spiral that happens in a part of our brain that it's such a strange thing that part of the brain believes that it's stuck and also believes that nothing that contradicts it is true at all. So you get into this tiny, I call it an anxiety spiral, and it believes that only it is real. And people who have strokes, and they can only use that part of their brain, they believe that half the world doesn't exist because they're only perceiving it with the anxious mind and nothing else exists. But if you can go from, I'm always going to be stuck in this bed to I'm always going to be free in this bed, then part of your brain, lets go of the anxiety and it turns to the part of the brain that is creative, and that is the part that a lot of people don't understand that the opposite of your worst thought is not this serene bliss or column.

(00:46:07):

It is that you suddenly walk into the zone of the human imagination at its most creative and it can solve anything.

Mel Robbins (00:46:16):

Well, that is the topic of your new seventh Instant, New York Times bestselling book Beyond Anxiety. And I would love to have you explain that tool of flipping from that kind of anxiety spiral to how you tap into the creative brain. Because when you are stuck, when you do feel like you don't know what your purpose is, anxiety does take over.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:46:44):

Oh yeah,

Mel Robbins (00:46:44):

Because you're so worried. What if I never get unstuck? What if I never figure it out? What if I die and I wasted all this time? What if I never even figured out who I was or what I was meant to be? And this is where all your work with people and what you've written about for years really helps people figure out. And so what do you want us to know about curiosity and creativity, especially for somebody who's stuck?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:47:10):

Here's the first thing you need to know. Anxiety always lies, but only always

Mel Robbins (00:47:18):

Wait, what does that mean? But only always,

Dr. Martha Beck (00:47:20):

And I just like to say it, it's like a thing that makes you feel entrapped is always bad for you, but only always. And it's just a joke. It's a way of, because people think, ah, yeah, that's sort of, no, I really mean it. All Your anxiety is lying. Oh, no, it isn't. I put that at the end of the book. If I'd put it at the beginning, people would've said, F you and just thrown it at the wall, right? Yes. It feels so convincing that your most frightening self hating thoughts are the truth, and it's lying. So that's the first thing. Just hear me now. Understand me later. I'm

Mel Robbins (00:47:58):

Stealing that. Hear me now. Understand me later. That is amazing. Okay,

Dr. Martha Beck (00:48:04):

So you nailed it in your book. Let them because let them a phrase where you're in this tent state you're trying to control. So the anxiety spiral goes, fear control back to fear again. And it just spins and it gets bigger and bigger. And the attempt to control gets bigger and let them is a way out of the spiral. And it's genius. It's genius. So you know that it's genius. You have it tattooed on your bodies. So let them kind of relaxes the spiral. And then when you say, let me do something given that this person or this world of van is happening the way it's happening,

(00:48:45):

Let me assume my responsibility, my ability to respond given that my mind is free. Okay? So let me do what now. You are using the part of your brain that creates, and there's tons of evidence showing that anxiety shuts down creativity. What there's not a lot of studies about is creativity also shuts down anxiety. So if you can go into that creative space, you'll go for three or four hours and then realize, I haven't been anxious for three or four hours. So when you sit down to write, and you shared with me that you have dyslexia, right? So the written word has not always been your friend, but you create these amazing books. Think about being inside that creative process. I don't know how you do it. For me, it's always somebody sitting across from me who's in

Mel Robbins (00:49:45):

Prison. What do you mean?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:49:48):

Well, I once met a warden from a woman's prison, and this is when I was doing my Oprah Magazine column, and she told me that when they tossed the cells, the most common thing they found were copies of my column from Oprah Magazine. And I remember crying, going back to my hotel room and crying because I felt such tremendous empathy with someone sitting talk about stuck, no options. I think the part of me that was so trapped and found its way to freedom has always been trying to find the trapped part of other people and say, we're going to get you out of here.

Mel Robbins (00:50:31):

Wow. Yeah. Over the years you've worked with so many people, what are the top most painful thoughts? If you had a list of ones you hear over and over and we all kind of think we're the only one. And so I think it would be very validating for someone listening to hear just some of the top things that are the most painful thoughts people have shared with you over the decades and how you flip it.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:50:59):

Okay, so number one off the charts is, I'm not good enough. I am not valuable, I'm not worthy. And it can be imposter syndrome, it can be jealousy, it can be whatever, but the root of it is I'm not good. Not even enough. I'm not good. The biggest lie ever told, go to a nursery in a hospital and pick up a baby and tell me which one of them isn't good. If we knew ourselves to be that precious, we would automatically live our purpose if we could experience ourselves as being these innocent creatures that are bumbling through life. And I feel like the powers that be the divine force of the universe is just going, oh, sweetie. Oh, honey, how could you think that? I mean, I remember looking at some horses once and going, oh wow, they're so beautiful. And this woman who was with me, new horses, and she said, well, that one's sway backed.

(00:52:04):

And that one's, I'm like, shut up. They're all perfect. They're all beautiful. And when you step out of suffering enough times, you sit down and say, I'm not good enough. Immediately flips to, oh my God, I'm so good. I haven't had to earn it. It's not something I did. My favorite spiritual teacher, Byron Katie, says, if you understood how important you are, you would shatter into a billion pieces and just be light. And she had that experience. And I believe she went beyond suffering. And I've come out of suffering over and over again, like someone surfacing out of deep water and taking a breath of the truth. There is no word to describe how utterly precious you are. Hear me now, understand me later. I had a near death experience once.

Mel Robbins (00:53:03):

What happened?

Dr. Martha Beck (00:53:04):

Oh my God. I mean, I've written about it. I've talked about it. I wasn't dead. I was in surgery for actually scars that were inflicted by sexual abuse. When I was a child, I was getting flashbacks, and the scar tissue had started bleeding internally. That happens. It did with me. Actually not that uncommon for post-traumatic stress syndrome to inflict wounds that were inflicted on you at the time of the trauma

(00:53:35):

To get your attention. Because suffering is always trying to say, here, here, look here. So I was in the surgery and I opened my eyes and I sat up and I looked around, and then I thought, wait a second. I'm lying down. My eyes are taped shut. What's happening? And I looked at the surgeons and I was sitting up and my body was lying down and they were working. And I was like, I became very confused. And I lay back down into my body and I looked up at the surgical lights, which were very, very bright. And then in between all of them. And you got to understand this was a time of maximum suffering for me. I was in physical agony. I three little kids under five, all kinds of nonsense. They say, we only see a trillionth of the available light spectrum.

(00:55:34):

And later when I said, I want to talk to the anesthesiologist, I thought that might be a drug effect. It was not a drug effect. And I wanted to quiz him. And he said, what happened in there? And I sort of told him, and he said, I went to increase the medication. And a voice said to me, don't do that. She's crying because she's happy. And he was just pale because he thought he'd done the wrong thing. And he said, did I do something horrible? I was like, no, no. He said, you know how many times that's happened to me in 33 years of practice? I said, no. And he said once. And then he kissed me on the forehead and went away. But when the light touched me and sort of suffused me, it just said, you're about to go through some really hard stuff. And I was complete loss of all my family members, my job, my industry, my home, all my friends totally gone. And it

Mel Robbins (00:56:31):

Said, and is that because you left the church? Yeah.

Dr. Martha Beck (00:56:34):

Yeah. I left everything. And it said, I just, you're about to go through something really hard. Just remember, I'm always, always with you. And I came out of that surgery in my, it was kind of like the experience in Cambridge where I just said, okay, that light is with us.

(00:56:53):

I am going to live as if I can see it all the time. And then I had a son with Down syndrome who told me at a friend's funeral that he can see it all the time. He said, life isn't so sad after the light comes and opens your heart. And I was like, who told you that?