How to Design Your Life (A Full Step-by-Step Process)

Name: How to Design Your Life (A Full Step-by-Step Process)
Uploaded: 2025-09-13T19:08:49+00:00
Duration: 1 h 9 min 16 s
Channel: Mel Robbins

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00:00:00What does it mean to design your life?

00:00:02Design is embedded in everything that we do.

00:00:05It's about intention, making decisions about what you want your life to look like and feel like,

00:00:13and then creating a plan to try and make that happen.

00:00:18Today on the Mel Robbins podcast,

00:00:20you are going to learn the step-by-step process to designing the life you want.

00:00:26Debbie Millman is a highly regarded designer,

00:00:28professor, artist, writer, and brand strategist

00:00:31who has taught life design for over a decade.

00:00:34I believe that confidence is over-eating.

00:00:39People hate change.

00:00:41That's one thing I can tell you without a doubt.

00:00:43People determine what is impossible before they even try what is possible.

00:00:51You can go after what you want and get it.

00:00:54You can go after what you want and not get it.

00:00:57Or you could not go after what you want and you could regret that and you'll never metabolize that regret.

00:01:04There's no closure.

00:01:05It's just infinite.

00:01:07It's infinite.

00:01:08Suffering.

00:01:10Yeah.

00:01:11This exercise isn't about process, probability, and realism.

00:01:16Whatever it is, anything that you wanted could be manifested.

00:01:19So you achieved 80% of what you wrote down in that one exercise.

00:01:2480%.

00:01:24We're afraid to want things.

00:01:27You're never going to be younger.

00:01:29You're never going to be more beautiful.

00:01:30What are you waiting for?

00:01:32Where do we begin?

00:01:33We begin very simply by starting.

00:01:36Hey, it's Mel.

00:01:42And before we get into this episode, which I know you're going to love because it's all about designing your life.

00:01:50My team was showing me that 57% of you who watch here on YouTube are not subscribed yet.

00:01:56Could you do me a quick favor?

00:01:57Hit subscribe.

00:01:59It's free.

00:02:00And that way you don't miss any of the episodes that I post here on YouTube.

00:02:03It also lets me know that you're enjoying the guests and you love the content that I'm bringing you because I want to make sure you don't miss anything.

00:02:11So thank you.

00:02:12Thank you for hitting subscribe.

00:02:14All right.

00:02:14You're ready to design the life you've always wanted.

00:02:17I bet you are.

00:02:18So let's dive in.

00:02:20Professor Debbie Millman, thank you for being here.

00:02:23I'm so excited.

00:02:24You are here on the Mel Robbins podcast.

00:02:27It's just incredible to be here.

00:02:30Well, I love this topic of designing the life that you want.

00:02:34I love your work.

00:02:36You are somebody that I've been wanting to have here in our Boston studios from the very beginning.

00:02:41So thank you for making the trip.

00:02:43And I'd love to have you start by speaking directly to the person who's with us right now.

00:02:49They want to design a life that they love.

00:02:53And so, Debbie, what does it mean to design your life?

00:02:56Designing your life is about intention.

00:02:59It's about making decisions about what you want your life to look like and feel like and embody and then creating a plan to try and make that happen.

00:03:13I absolutely love that because you do have a process that you have been teaching to students and graduate students for almost two decades.

00:03:25Yeah.

00:03:25And you're going to walk us step by step through that process.

00:03:29And one of the things, though, in case the person listening isn't familiar with your work or they're not a graphic designer or a business owner or somebody that thinks about design, an artist, a creative, can you just explain, you know, how you use design principles in relation to creating the life that you want?

00:03:51Design, in its essence, is about very deliberate decisions about how you want anything to exist.

00:04:01It could be a product.

00:04:03It could be a logo.

00:04:05It could be a room.

00:04:06It could be a meal.

00:04:08Everything that we do intentionally is something that we can design.

00:04:15We design how we look.

00:04:17We design how we live.

00:04:18We can even begin to learn how to design some of the things that are more unconscious.

00:04:25And that's what this roadmap for growth really allows you to do.

00:04:29It allows you to sort of wake up some of the things that you hope and dream for but might have been too afraid to look at or see or design.

00:04:42Well, what I love about the topic of design is that even though I don't consider myself a talented designer, if I step in the shoes of somebody, whether they're designing fashion or they're designing products or they're creating art, it's the ability to create something that doesn't exist right now.

00:05:05Yes, absolutely.

00:05:06And that's the design in its highest power.

00:05:10Is it possible to design your life?

00:05:13Because I think that so many of us have had the experience where I'm completely stuck.

00:05:19I don't know what I want.

00:05:21And you're about to walk us through this incredible process where you can design your life.

00:05:27Is it really possible?

00:05:31Well, Mel, look what you've done.

00:05:34No.

00:05:36Look what you've done.

00:05:38There is a way in which you can create a pathway to be able to make decisions about what you want, even if those things change.

00:05:53Because it's not about determining what is probable, it's about determining what is possible.

00:06:02And being able to have possibilities for your life allow you to be able to start to experiment with what those possibilities might feel like.

00:06:14I love what you just said.

00:06:16I want to make sure that as you were listening to Debbie that you really got that.

00:06:19But it's not about what's probable, it's about what's possible.

00:06:26Yes.

00:06:26And a lot of people make decisions based on what they think is going to be the most likely successful outcome.

00:06:37And they make those decisions primarily because they're afraid to fail or be rejected or be humiliated or shamed for trying to do something that they might not think that they have any right to want.

00:06:54And I'm speaking from experience.

00:06:55I'm not just speaking theoretically.

00:06:57I'm not talking about this because I learned this in college.

00:07:01Actually, most of what I've experienced comes from failing or being rejected or feeling ashamed of what I wanted or who I am.

00:07:11And trying to work through that to understand that we have this one life, you can move forward and create something with creativity, with clarity, with spirituality, with honesty.

00:07:29And you're going to teach us through this process that you have been teaching people for almost two decades how to create a vision from your life that doesn't exist right now and might even be something that you can't even comprehend that you could possibly create for yourself.

00:07:50And you're here to say, no, no, no, through this process of thinking like a designer, you can intentionally design the life you want.

00:07:56Yeah.

00:07:57I want to start by having you tell me how you came up with this exercise in the first place.

00:08:05Well, it's something that I learned from someone else.

00:08:08I didn't plant these seeds.

00:08:09These seeds were planted for me.

00:08:11In 2005, I took a class with the late, great Milton Glaser.

00:08:15Milton Glaser is one of the great, great designers of the 20th century.

00:08:20He created the I Heart New York logo.

00:08:22He created that magnificent, memorable Dylan poster where he's in silhouette, but his hair is all flying colors.

00:08:31And the last exercise of the class of this program was writing an essay to yourself about what you wanted your life to look like five years in the future.

00:08:43If you could have and get and be anything that you wanted, anything.

00:08:51And he asked us to take it very seriously.

00:08:55He said he'd been teaching this class for 50 years.

00:08:59Five, zero.

00:09:01Yep.

00:09:01And he asked us to write an essay five years in the future if we could have exactly the life that we wanted.

00:09:10So he wanted us to write it from the moment we woke up on a day five years in the future till the moment we closed our eyes to go to sleep.

00:09:20And even though he was one of the most famous, if not the most famous graphic designer in the United States, maybe the world, he said that this class was the most important thing he was doing with his life.

00:09:34Wow.

00:09:35He also said, for some mysterious reason, this was an exercise that changed people's lives, that he had been doing it for so long that virtually not a week went by when a former student wrote him and said, everything came true.

00:09:56I don't know how or why, but everything came true.

00:09:59So not only did I write a 12-page essay, I also made a list.

00:10:05I wrote a list of 20 things that I would be doing in 2010.

00:10:09And then, Mel, I forgot about it.

00:10:12It was in a journal that I was keeping that I had a lot of other notes in.

00:10:17About a year later, I was trying to remember where I had written an address down of something that was important to me.

00:10:26And I was like, oh, I think I wrote it in that red journal.

00:10:29And I went back to my journals and I took out the red journal, which I had finished.

00:10:33And I came across the essay.

00:10:35I was like, oh, wow.

00:10:38Because everything that I had written, I was aspiring to.

00:10:42The things that I was doing that I love doing, I was doing more of.

00:10:46But there were so many things.

00:10:48Like what?

00:10:49Like teaching at the School of Visual Arts.

00:10:51Like being a member, a leader in the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

00:10:58Writing a book.

00:10:59Of curating an art exhibit.

00:11:02By 2006, I had started teaching at the School of Visual Arts.

00:11:08I had forgotten that I'd even put that on the list.

00:11:10I had gotten my first book deal.

00:11:16I had been invited to be a board member of the New York chapter of AIGA.

00:11:23And I was like, whoa.

00:11:26How did that happen?

00:11:28Because I didn't remember that I had written any of that.

00:11:31I had completely put it out of my mind.

00:11:33Now, one thing that Milton asked us to do was to read it out loud to the class.

00:11:42So everyone got up and shared.

00:11:44And I do think that that declaration was really, really important.

00:11:51It's one thing to write something and sort of hide it.

00:11:53It's another thing to almost admit that these are things that you want.

00:11:58And once you admit it out loud, I think that there's a way that it somehow integrates into your own intentions.

00:12:07Yes.

00:12:07Which is what design is.

00:12:09It's decisions that you make intentionally.

00:12:12So you can make a decision about how you want to live.

00:12:15You can make a decision about who you want to love.

00:12:18These things are very much determined by what we believe we're entitled to.

00:12:25What we believe we're worthy of and what we think we have enough talent to be able to achieve.

00:12:31But a lot of those are so self-determined.

00:12:35And often they're determined at a very young age before we're really even conscious of making those decisions that then impact the rest of our lives.

00:12:45How did this exercise change your life?

00:12:47Well, it changed my life in every possible way.

00:12:50It changed how I work, who I work with, what I do, how I do it.

00:12:56So what happened was Milton stopped teaching.

00:12:58Okay.

00:12:59And I started teaching.

00:13:01Milton's on the board of directors at the School of Visual Arts.

00:13:05I also asked him if it would be okay, since he wasn't teaching it anymore, to use that exercise in my classes.

00:13:13But because I was teaching much younger people than mid-level designers looking to re-beat their life, I wanted to give them a bit more runway.

00:13:23I wanted to give them more of an opportunity to have their lives unfurl with a little bit more patience.

00:13:29So you took the exercise that was transformative to you, that Milton had taught you when you were in your 40s taking this class, and you made it your own because you were thinking about the fact that a lot of your students are in their 20s.

00:13:45Yes.

00:13:45Can you walk us step-by-step through this process?

00:13:48Yes, absolutely.

00:13:49Okay, great, because it's me and this person somewhere around the world that's taking the time to listen.

00:13:54How do we start?

00:13:56Well, you start by starting.

00:13:57Okay.

00:13:58You just decide, I'm going to start this for me, and I'm going to experience a lot of different emotions.

00:14:04Not all of them are going to be pleasant, but they're all real emotions, and those emotions are really important to look at because some people do have stress doing these types of exercises.

00:14:16They have stress for any number of reasons.

00:14:18One, because they might not think that they can achieve it.

00:14:21They might not think they're worthy.

00:14:23They might have a lot of fear about wanting things.

00:14:26What does it mean to want something, to really want something, and to admit that you want something?

00:14:33Okay, so let me just say something real quick, because you've got this incredible deck of cards called the Remarkable Life Deck.

00:14:41This is a deck of cards that I've created.

00:14:45I designed and wrote the questions.

00:14:49It is a deck that includes instructions.

00:14:53It includes a little journal so that you can write in it if you want.

00:14:57And it includes 30 cards that have two different ways you can approach this exercise.

00:15:04The first is very prescriptive, the way I like things, with very clear questions.

00:15:10How do you define happiness?

00:15:12What are your career goals?

00:15:13What are you telling yourself you can't do that you can?

00:15:17Those are the kinds of questions I like.

00:15:19Very clear.

00:15:20But other people are maybe a little bit more abstract, want a little bit more freedom to go in lots of different directions that they aren't planning for.

00:15:29And so the other side of the cards are prompts.

00:15:32Imagine immensities.

00:15:34Make the impossible possible.

00:15:36Took a long time, too.

00:15:38So it gives you a little bit more freedom if you prefer being more abstract.

00:15:42And it gives you a little bit more clarity if you like a protocol.

00:15:47And one thing I want to say about you is that you were adamant that we made sure that the process that we're going to go through isn't something that you have to necessarily buy the deck of cards for.

00:16:00And so I want to just acknowledge you, Professor Millman, for making a download available for free.

00:16:06So wherever you're watching this or you're listening, you can go to melrobbins.com slash designyourlife.

00:16:13And Professor Millman has designed something for you that you can download that will act as a companion to everything that we're talking about for free.

00:16:23And so I want to thank you up front for that.

00:16:25Oh, my pleasure.

00:16:26I wanted, when I was asked to create something around this exercise, I was very specific about it at the time being cards that people can play with.

00:16:39They can answer some of the questions.

00:16:40They can answer all of the questions.

00:16:42They can go in any order they want to or they can go in the order that they came out of the box.

00:16:47And so for people to have this access to this exercise is the most important thing to me.

00:16:54So one quick question is, how specifically should we do this exercise?

00:17:00Because, you know, I know the person that's with us right now listening or watching is probably a lot like I am.

00:17:05Like, Professor Millman, how do I do this, Debbie?

00:17:07Tell me what to do.

00:17:09Am I writing it down?

00:17:10Can I listen to this podcast if I'm on a walk and then come back and write it down?

00:17:14Like, what's the actual steps before you walk us through the prompts and questions?

00:17:18I would suggest that you write however you like to write.

00:17:24Okay.

00:17:25If you like to write on your phone, write it on your phone.

00:17:27If you want to write it on your iPad, you can write it on your iPad.

00:17:30If you want to write it on paper, awesome.

00:17:32If you want to write it in a journal, beautiful.

00:17:35However you feel comfortable, that's the most important thing.

00:17:38There's no prescription to how it's done.

00:17:40And I would wait for an opportunity or carve out an opportunity for you to be in a place

00:17:50where you feel peaceful, where you feel free, where you'll have some space just for you.

00:17:58And then start to work on beginning to envision what your life could be like

00:18:10if you could have anything that you wanted and you were unafraid to pursue your dreams.

00:18:16I love that.

00:18:17And so if you're listening or watching right now, I'm going to invite you to just listen

00:18:23or watch this entire conversation because I know your work and I know simply experiencing

00:18:29the conversation right now will actually crack something open so that when you find time

00:18:36to sit with a journal or be in a place where you can write this stuff out,

00:18:40you're going to have already taken the first step and be really ready to just jump into

00:18:46that cold pool on a warm summer day and it's going to be incredible.

00:18:50So awesome.

00:18:51And again, the first sentence I ask them all to start with, it is October 29th, 2035.

00:19:01I open my eyes and where are you?

00:19:07What are you doing?

00:19:08Who are you with?

00:19:09Are you sleeping next to someone?

00:19:11Do you have pets?

00:19:12Do you have children?

00:19:13What are your sheets like?

00:19:14What does your bedroom look like?

00:19:16What is your day start with?

00:19:19How do you exercise?

00:19:20Do you have a spiritual practice?

00:19:22What are you eating?

00:19:23Where do you go to work?

00:19:24Do you have meetings?

00:19:25What kind of money do you need?

00:19:28And so on.

00:19:29Do you have a bicycle?

00:19:30Do you have a car?

00:19:31Do you have a skateboard?

00:19:32Whatever it is that you imagine you could have, if anything that you wanted could be manifested

00:19:40without fear, without worrying about the ways in which it could happen, just this is your

00:19:48life 10 years from now.

00:19:49That's the opening invitation.

00:19:53So whatever date and wherever you are and however old or young you may be, the invitation

00:20:00is to time travel ahead 10 years from today.

00:20:05Yeah.

00:20:05And that is how we begin this exercise of designing the life that you want.

00:20:10Why is 10 years an important time frame to help you not think about probability, but to imagine

00:20:18what might be possible?

00:20:21This is really amending the original exercise that Milton created.

00:20:28He gave us a time frame of five years.

00:20:31I don't think that's realistic at all.

00:20:34And I don't want people to feel they have to be realistic.

00:20:37One of the other reasons that this can be distressing for people is that they are thinking

00:20:42about what is realistic.

00:20:44I don't want you to think about realistic.

00:20:46I want you to think the opposite of realistic.

00:20:49They also get very caught up in the process.

00:20:52This is not an exercise about process.

00:20:55I don't even want you to think about the process.

00:20:57I want you to think about the outcome.

00:20:59If you start thinking about how am I going to do this, it defeats the whole purpose.

00:21:04Make it your dream.

00:21:06This is my fantasy about what my life could be if I could get everything that I wanted.

00:21:14And it doesn't mean you're going to get everything you want, but it's certainly going to get you

00:21:17more than what you have.

00:21:19That's true.

00:21:19And that I can guarantee.

00:21:21So we're going to think 10 years ahead.

00:21:23I'm 56 years old.

00:21:25So I'm now going to think 10 years ahead.

00:21:27I am 66 years old.

00:21:29You may be in your 20s and now you're thinking about being in your 30s.

00:21:33You may be a teenager and now you're thinking about your 20s.

00:21:36You may be in your 30s.

00:21:37You're thinking about your 40s.

00:21:39And so this is an invitation to go one decade ahead, 10 years in your life.

00:21:45And then the next question you ask yourself is.

00:21:4810 years from now, where do you live?

00:21:51Describe your surroundings.

00:21:52I'm 66, I cannot believe I'm 66 years old.

00:21:58Wait until you're my age.

00:22:00Then you're in your 70s.

00:22:03And so you think about yourself 10 years older.

00:22:09And you imagine waking up and opening your eyes.

00:22:14And the first thing that you ask yourself is, where do you live?

00:22:19Where are you?

00:22:21Where are you?

00:22:21Well, for me, I see the ocean.

00:22:24And I don't live near the ocean right now.

00:22:28Well, I think that's a cue.

00:22:31What happens if the thing that you immediately see makes no sense?

00:22:37Or do people ever open their eyes and imagine themselves 10 years from now and they can't see where they live?

00:22:49Well, one question that I would ask you is, why doesn't it make sense, Mel?

00:22:54If it's something that you're envisioning for yourself, this ocean, why doesn't it make sense?

00:22:59You're already telling yourself that something maybe isn't possible or doesn't compute before it's possible and before it could even maybe remotely compute.

00:23:14You've already said process.

00:23:16You've already said, I want to understand why I want this or how I want this or how I'm going to get it without just allowing yourself to envision being in that environment.

00:23:30And that's what holds us back from ever getting that because we're thinking process.

00:23:35We're thinking probability.

00:23:37We're thinking realistic.

00:23:39So if you ask yourself the question, it's 10 years from now.

00:23:45I open my eyes.

00:23:47Where am I living?

00:23:48And you have a vision.

00:23:50Paris.

00:23:51Oh, I live in the mountains.

00:23:53Oh, I live in a ski town.

00:23:54Oh, I live in a beach.

00:23:55Oh, I live in a high rise, a penthouse.

00:23:57This is a spectacular home.

00:23:59What?

00:23:59Yeah.

00:24:00If it doesn't make sense, you immediately go, uh-uh.

00:24:04Process, realism, probability.

00:24:05But this exercise isn't about process, probability, and realism.

00:24:11The exercise you're teaching us is how to design the life you actually want.

00:24:17Right.

00:24:17And these questions help us imagine possibilities that we don't even realize are within our reach over time.

00:24:25Yes.

00:24:26And or we might hope that they're within our reach, but we don't have what I guess people would say is confidence to go out and make it happen.

00:24:38But I really think that confidence is not only a myth, but it's really overrated in terms of being able to depend on it to help us make things happen.

00:24:54So, what is the next question you should ask yourself in this process of designing the life that you want?

00:25:01You've now opened your eyes.

00:25:03You imagine where you live.

00:25:05It doesn't have to make sense.

00:25:06Just keep going with it.

00:25:07What's the next question we ask ourselves?

00:25:09Um, what does your home look like?

00:25:12Huh.

00:25:14Home.

00:25:16Interesting, because it doesn't, it's somewhat modern and very beachy, I guess.

00:25:23Well, it's interesting because I-

00:25:24It doesn't look like where I live now.

00:25:25And I can envision you in that.

00:25:27Like, when you say it, it makes sense to me.

00:25:28Yeah.

00:25:29It feels like home.

00:25:34And a lot of the questions here that I pulled out aren't necessarily in order now, but they're just some of the questions that I love most.

00:25:42Um, what kind of love do you need?

00:25:44Hmm.

00:25:48Constant, Debbie.

00:25:49I need constant.

00:25:50Same.

00:25:50I need the dog running around.

00:25:52I need the coffee brought to me in bed.

00:25:54I need grandchildren running around everywhere.

00:25:57Exactly.

00:25:57Constant love.

00:25:58That's what I need.

00:25:59Yep.

00:26:00Are you in a relationship?

00:26:01Describe who you love most, what they're like, and why you love them.

00:26:08Describe your physical self.

00:26:12How is your health?

00:26:13How do you take care of yourself?

00:26:16I have hope on the other side because I hope that I stay healthy.

00:26:21I hope we all stay healthy.

00:26:24This is one that sometimes gives people pause.

00:26:28How do you take up space?

00:26:29How do you take up space?

00:26:30How do you take up space?

00:26:32What does that mean?

00:26:34That means do you allow yourself to be fully present?

00:26:40Do you try to make yourself smaller so other people can be present?

00:26:45I think that a lot of people are afraid of taking up space because they might feel like

00:26:57they're literally and figuratively too big, that they're somehow more than they should be, that they're too much, that they want more than they should.

00:27:08Do you have a spiritual practice?

00:27:10If so, what does that entail?

00:27:15Outline your relationship with money.

00:27:17How much do you need?

00:27:18How much do you want?

00:27:19What do you want to do with it?

00:27:2110 years from now, 10 years from now, what have you developed mastery of?

00:27:27And on the back, it says it took a long time too, because I think it takes a long time to gain mastery of anything.

00:27:34And I think that in today's speed of technology, with today's speed of technology, there's an expectation that as soon as you graduate college, you are a master of whatever it is you want to be a master of, that you are expected to be successful out of the gate.

00:27:54And I think that's heartbreaking, because I think it takes a long time, it takes a long time to do anything worthwhile, because you have to practice at it.

00:28:06That mastery question is really interesting.

00:28:09What if you don't know what you want to do?

00:28:12So I'm thinking about the number of people that are going to share this with 20-somethings in their life, or people in their 30s who have spent time doing a certain career, and now they're like, I don't like this.

00:28:22I need to reinvent myself.

00:28:24I need to change.

00:28:24What if when you ask yourself, what was the question again?

00:28:28What have you developed mastery of?

00:28:32What if you don't know?

00:28:34Chances are you are harboring some love of something.

00:28:40I don't know anybody that doesn't have dreams.

00:28:45What I did when I first wrote my five-year plan, which turned into a 12-year plan, was have a lot of meetings.

00:28:54I had meetings with gallery.

00:28:56I had meetings with a publisher.

00:28:58I had meetings with corporations that I might be working with.

00:29:03I was doing a podcast.

00:29:05I was writing.

00:29:07So I just had a very busy day.

00:29:09That's what you imagined.

00:29:11And that's what I imagined.

00:29:12I was just going from thing to thing.

00:29:13I had a lunch date.

00:29:14I had a dinner date.

00:29:15And I just had a very full day of doing all the things that I wanted to do.

00:29:21Now, if you want to do a lot of things, do a lot of things.

00:29:26The one thing that I can tell you is when you do a lot of things, it takes a longer time to develop mastery of those things.

00:29:36Because you don't develop mastery until you practice a lot.

00:29:39If you're doing five or ten different things, like I've always done my whole life, it's not a surprise that I didn't get good at them until I was in my 40s, 50s, and now my 60s.

00:29:50I only realize that now in hindsight.

00:29:54Do I wish that I had spent more time doing any of those one or two or three things?

00:29:58No.

00:29:59Because I like a full life.

00:30:01And I still love learning new things.

00:30:04And so if I was only doing one or two things, I think I'd have limited my own creativity in ways that wouldn't have been healthy for me.

00:30:14Now, there are some people that are like, I want to do that.

00:30:18I want to be a professional athlete.

00:30:20I want to be an ice skater.

00:30:22I want to be a teacher.

00:30:23I want to be a doctor.

00:30:24Then focus on that one thing.

00:30:26But if you don't know what that one thing is, play with as many things as you want to.

00:30:32Do you think a lot of us get stuck because we're not clear what we want?

00:30:36Well, I don't know if it's that we're not clear.

00:30:39It's that we're afraid to allow ourselves to imagine immensities.

00:30:44We're afraid to want things because we're afraid that if we want things and we don't get them, that we are failing or that we'll be humiliated.

00:30:59I once asked a student, well, what would be the worst thing that happened if you didn't get this thing that you wanted?

00:31:06And he said, I would die of heartbreak.

00:31:11And I said, no, no, you won't.

00:31:14You'll metabolize that heartbreak and you'll be able to understand what it taught you.

00:31:22People determine what is impossible before they even try what is possible.

00:31:30Say more about that.

00:31:31Can you give me an example?

00:31:32You want to be an artist with a capital A.

00:31:37You don't think you could be successful at it.

00:31:40You don't think that anyone will appreciate your work.

00:31:44You don't think that you'll be able to make a living at it.

00:31:48Therefore, you don't pursue it.

00:31:50And that's looking at what the impossible.

00:31:53It is impossible for me.

00:31:55But it's all self-determined.

00:31:57There's no, you haven't tested it.

00:31:59You haven't tried it.

00:32:00You've just assumed it because of your own feelings of self-worth or what you're entitled to or what your life can be.

00:32:09So you're determining, I'm not going to do this because I don't think I'm going to be successful at it.

00:32:14And therefore, you are determining what is impossible before you even try.

00:32:21And so many people do that.

00:32:23I teach both undergraduate students and graduate students.

00:32:27And 21-year-olds are already deciding that something is not possible for their lives.

00:32:33And that breaks my heart.

00:32:34And because I experience that exact same emotion and that same feeling, I try to help them move through feeling that something isn't possible just because they don't think that they're good enough.

00:32:51Wow.

00:32:53What's the next question?

00:32:54What are five things you would do if you knew you would not fail?

00:32:59So 10 years from now, what are five things?

00:33:03Is it that you would do or that you've done?

00:33:05Like, how do you do this?

00:33:06Just anything.

00:33:07What are five things you would do if you knew you would not fail?

00:33:11If you're doing them now, chances are you probably think you're not going to fail.

00:33:15If you have things as future ideas, chances are you would put those on the list.

00:33:24Well, I'll give you a couple answers because as you asked me about the things that I want to master or what are five things I would do that I wouldn't fail, well, one is, and I'm even laughing at myself.

00:33:37Like, I would imagine that that's kind of a normal response that you feel almost embarrassed that you're about to say this out loud.

00:33:43And I don't know why I am laughing at myself, but one of them is I really want to write a fantasy novel.

00:33:55It seems stupid, but I don't know why I'm saying it's stupid.

00:33:59Why does it seem stupid?

00:34:00Why?

00:34:00I don't know.

00:34:01But you're already living a fantasy.

00:34:03Why wouldn't you want to write a fantasy book?

00:34:06I don't know.

00:34:07Like, I guess there's something in it.

00:34:09Like, maybe it wouldn't be that good.

00:34:10Maybe that's the thing.

00:34:11Process.

00:34:12Probability.

00:34:13Realistic.

00:34:14Yes.

00:34:14I'm actually trashing what's possible.

00:34:18What are some of the things that your students say in response to that question?

00:34:24Will you read the question again?

00:34:26What are five things you would do if you knew you would not fail?

00:34:30So let's kind of take it by decades since you've been teaching this process to people of all ages.

00:34:36What do people in their 20s tend to say?

00:34:38A good job.

00:34:40A good job?

00:34:41A good job.

00:34:41They want a job that they feel proud of.

00:34:45They want a dream job.

00:34:48And I encourage them to go after what they want.

00:34:51That first job can really set you up for a path of either realism or possibility.

00:35:00And so often they'll take the very first job that comes their way, not because they want that job, but because they have security in getting a job.

00:35:11And I'm not suggesting that they could keep looking for something that does fill their heart and soul with more joy than what they might be taking because they have to pay their student loan back.

00:35:27Right.

00:35:27And so you take the job, but you keep looking.

00:35:30Not only do you keep looking, but you keep making things.

00:35:33You know, my students are very creative people.

00:35:35And so they often find that they're working for somebody that the work that they're doing might not be what they would consider portfolio material, something that they'd want to show other people.

00:35:47There's nothing stopping young people, especially from creating whatever they want to create and posting it wherever they want to post it.

00:35:56There's never been a time in our history as a species where people could share their dreams, their hopes, their creativity with as many people as they want to.

00:36:07That's an extraordinary thing.

00:36:10And so I encourage all of my students undertake a 100 day project wherein they have to make something every single day for 100 days.

00:36:20And that gives them a body of work that they can then make as they wish without parameters, without a client, without worrying that they're not going to satisfy someone.

00:36:30But it also allows them to understand some of what they tell themselves about finishing something.

00:36:39Just because you're not in the mood to do something doesn't mean you have a permission slip to not do it.

00:36:45What matters more to you?

00:36:47Completing this assignment?

00:36:49Fulfilling your own personal obligation, your accountability to yourself?

00:36:53Or watching the new season of The Bear?

00:36:57What's the next question?

00:37:02What are you telling yourself you can't do that you can?

00:37:06How do people answer that one?

00:37:08Oh, my God.

00:37:10Usually with breathtaking self-sabotage.

00:37:17They tell themselves that they aren't ever going to meet the person of their dreams.

00:37:24They tell themselves that they're never going to get the house with the ocean.

00:37:28They tell themselves that they never can have their own business.

00:37:34This is all of the circling restrictions that keep us from actually trying.

00:37:41These are the things that are all about, again, the probability, the realism, and the process.

00:37:46You don't know that you can't do something until you try to do it.

00:37:52And just because you're afraid doesn't mean that, again, that gives you a permission slip to not do it.

00:37:59When you're afraid of something, you have to decide,

00:38:01Do I have more hope for this possibility happening than I do fear?

00:38:09Or do I have more fear than I have hope?

00:38:14That's a really important question.

00:38:15If you're holding yourself back, it means that you have more faith in the fear than you do in your hope.

00:38:24And then you have to really examine why.

00:38:27Why am I so afraid of it not working out?

00:38:34What if it does?

00:38:37And I encourage my students who are all young, and I tell them,

00:38:42You're never going to be younger.

00:38:43You're never going to be more beautiful than you are right now.

00:38:45And I can say that about pretty much anybody.

00:38:48You're never going to be younger.

00:38:49You're never going to be more beautiful.

00:38:51What are you waiting for?

00:38:52What are you waiting for?

00:38:54Waiting for the fear to go away.

00:38:57But it doesn't until you actually do it.

00:38:59Yeah.

00:39:00What's the next question?

00:39:02How do you define happiness?

00:39:04How do you define happiness?

00:39:08I've thought about this one a lot.

00:39:10When am I happiest?

00:39:12And Mel, I'm happiest when I'm making things.

00:39:17That's when I'm happiest.

00:39:19Making these cards, drawing them, writing them.

00:39:24Gave me a great deal of joy.

00:39:26Writing my most recent book.

00:39:28It's a visual book.

00:39:29So I drew and wrote at the same time, my love letter to a garden.

00:39:36When I was doing that, I realized I could do this for the rest of my life.

00:39:40That's happiness.

00:39:43Happiness is being with my wife.

00:39:46I feel an enormous amount of peace and contentment when I'm with her.

00:39:52You know, Seth Godin is another dear friend of mine and my other mentor.

00:39:56And he talks about happiness as contentment.

00:40:00Happiness isn't searching for happy.

00:40:05Happy is in the moment and you're content.

00:40:07Nothing's going to make you happy.

00:40:09If you are content with what you have, that's happiness.

00:40:13I agree.

00:40:16That's how I would have answered it.

00:40:18Like just, I'm present.

00:40:21I'm in the moment.

00:40:24There's something about what I'm doing that I'm satisfied with.

00:40:29It's not some, like, and creating is a space when I'm making something, when I'm hanging out with Chris.

00:40:35It's all the same.

00:40:36I think a lot of us have the same thing.

00:40:38It's true.

00:40:39Very few people write their 10-year plan and write on it, I'm going to find the cure for cancer.

00:40:46I am going to go to Mars.

00:40:48Those, I don't know that they've ever come up.

00:40:50It's always about how can I create, create, construct a life of meaning, being content.

00:41:00When you ask the question, time travel 10 years, wake up.

00:41:06Wake up and you're 10 years older.

00:41:08Where do you live?

00:41:10Imagine your day from the moment your eyes open, the way that the sheets feel, the room that you're in, what you're doing, who is there, what you see, what you do with your time.

00:41:23Imagine it all the way through to the meals that you eat, the people that you see, the way that you spend your time, where you fall asleep, how the whole thing feels.

00:41:31When I visualize that, it's painfully simple.

00:41:37It really is.

00:41:40It's a beautiful day.

00:41:41I'm surrounded by family.

00:41:43And love.

00:41:43Yeah, and love.

00:41:44I see a couple close friends.

00:41:46I'm outside in nature.

00:41:48I'm working on something.

00:41:51That fantasy novel that I'm interested in creating.

00:41:56And there's not a whole lot of complexity to what I'm doing, but I'm content.

00:42:04Yeah.

00:42:04You feel a sense of peace at home.

00:42:07Yes.

00:42:07Recognition.

00:42:09This is me.

00:42:10So when you do this exercise with people in their 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s, do you see a difference based on decades in terms of what people visualize?

00:42:20Yes.

00:42:21What do you see when people, when you're teaching this to 20-year-olds, what are the big themes that people imagine when they look ahead 10 years?

00:42:30Usually the 20s include job, relationship, apartment, home.

00:42:38Okay.

00:42:3830s is a lot about family, children, mastery of a professional discipline.

00:42:5040s, people start to want to create more, to make more, to have more time, to have more balance.

00:42:58They start thinking about their health more.

00:43:01They start thinking about physical fitness and what they're going to be like as they get older.

00:43:05Money is all the way across.

00:43:08There's not a decade that people don't write about money.

00:43:12There's also not a decade that people don't write about pets.

00:43:15Isn't that interesting?

00:43:17Well, it's love.

00:43:18Yeah.

00:43:18Unconditional love.

00:43:19Yeah.

00:43:2050s and 60s, it's more about time.

00:43:27How am I going to use this time that I have?

00:43:30How am I going to create more meaning?

00:43:32What is my legacy?

00:43:34What am I leaving my family, my children?

00:43:39Sometimes it's about a second home.

00:43:40If somebody's listening right now and they're like, okay, well, this sounds incredible.

00:43:46I do want to design a life that I want.

00:43:48I do want to dwell on possibility.

00:43:50But that kind of sounds like for people with money, privilege, I don't have the luxury of that.

00:43:58But how does traveling 10 years ahead and imagining yourself in a different place actually help you address the very real problems and stuckness you may feel right now?

00:44:11I don't know that it's really about luxury as much as it is about permission.

00:44:16And yes, if you are able to imagine a life of freedom, there is an assumption there that you can be free.

00:44:30We got to highlight that.

00:44:32I want to just take that high.

00:44:33If you can design a life that makes you feel more freedom, it means that there is a belief in that assumption that it's possible.

00:44:46That changes you now because that's what anchors and gives you hope.

00:44:52Yes.

00:44:52Seeing a brighter future helps you shore yourself up now.

00:44:58And that makes you better equipped and more resilient to move through where you're at now, knowing that there's something coming in the future.

00:45:08Yes.

00:45:08And if we are all privileged enough to be free, then let's be more intentional with that freedom.

00:45:17I'm actually working with an organization where I'm going to go and work with incarcerated people to imagine what their lives can be.

00:45:27And that really showed me how privileged we are when we have our freedom and to take it very, very seriously.

00:45:38I think that hope is one of the most extraordinary things humans have.

00:45:48When we lose hope, we lose our lives.

00:45:53We lose our spirit.

00:45:55And even if you don't have the kind of freedom that we have, there is still hope at creating meaning.

00:46:06And I'm very curious to see what people that might not have the same type of freedom that we enjoy feel about what they can still make and hope for in their lives.

00:46:21And that will be a great privilege to me to be able to see how people do that.

00:46:28What are some of the common mistakes that you see your students and the people that you've taught this exercise to making when they try to design the life that they want?

00:46:40Most people get caught up in the process.

00:46:42How dare I think I can do this without this type of education or this type of money or this type of confidence or this type of partner or this type of body?

00:46:56And they begin to curtail the possibilities because they can't envision having these things.

00:47:05Again, they will think that they want something because they're comparing their lives to others.

00:47:14And I think that's a lot to do with social media.

00:47:18That if this person is doing this, I should be doing it too.

00:47:22And they might not even really want to do it, but they think that they should.

00:47:26Thinking what your family expects of you.

00:47:31And if you, especially I have a lot of foreign students and in certain Asian cultures, what the parents want for the children or what the children do.

00:47:41And that is respect for the family and for elders and for parents.

00:47:45And they really struggle with how much do I owe my family versus how much do I owe myself?

00:47:50So what is the balance between I may have a value as a person of kind of being loyal or respectful to elders and my family, and yet it's coming right up against like, maybe I don't want kids.

00:48:06Maybe I don't want to live in the town where my family is.

00:48:10Maybe I'm gay.

00:48:11Maybe I'm gay.

00:48:12Maybe, you know, whatever.

00:48:14I don't want to do the profession that they want me to do.

00:48:17Yeah.

00:48:18I think one of the most powerful things about this exercise is the declaration.

00:48:25So when I do these in my class, when the students have completed, they have a week to do the exercise.

00:48:33They come back the next week and we share them.

00:48:37And that's terrifying to people.

00:48:39And by share them, you mean read it out loud?

00:48:41Read them out loud.

00:48:42That's what Milton did with us.

00:48:43We had to read it out loud.

00:48:44Some people are really excited.

00:48:46They like charge up to the front of the room and they're like ready to share.

00:48:50And then other people are super scared and very shaky and afraid to admit this to folks, afraid to share their desires, their needs, their hopes, their dreams.

00:49:00And when people hear other people share their dreams and hopes and ideas about their future, it empowers them.

00:49:13This is a wonderful exercise to do with other people because you can share and also the people that love you most can also encourage you to go further.

00:49:27And so what happens in the classroom is suddenly people hear other people imagining immensities.

00:49:36One of my favorite, favorite cards is this one, imagine immensities.

00:49:44What's the question that helps you do that?

00:49:45Well, in this case, this is what are your career goals?

00:49:50What is your job title?

00:49:51How do you get to work?

00:49:52Do you travel for your job?

00:49:54How many people do you work with?

00:49:55What is the best part of your job?

00:49:57But this imagine immensities is in consideration of everything here.

00:50:04Imagine immensities.

00:50:05And when people hear other people, nobody responds with, really, how do you ever think you can do that?

00:50:16It's more people cry because they're so thrilled at hearing somebody share and declare.

00:50:22And that part of this, I think, allows people to go a little bit further.

00:50:29So after that first week and when we share, I ask people to go back one time and add anything you think you might have missed.

00:50:39Ooh, so after you read it, you get to add more?

00:50:43And that's something I did, not Milton.

00:50:45I love that.

00:50:46We get to supersize our own possibilities?

00:50:51When you hear how much other people can expand their possibilities, expand their ideas about their lives,

00:50:58if you have been consumed with process or probability or realism, opens up a door.

00:51:09I see that somebody else, and that's kind of comparison in the best possible way,

00:51:13where, oh, my God, this person is giving me permission to expect a little bit more from myself,

00:51:19hope for a little bit more from myself, manifest a little bit more from myself.

00:51:22And then they do that, and then it's done.

00:51:24And then it's done.

00:51:25You know, I just want to share this because for you as you're listening,

00:51:32the Mel Robbins podcast was completely born out of speaking it as a possibility.

00:51:42Like this notion, I'm realizing, imagine immensities.

00:51:47I literally would turn to Tracy, who's the executive producer, and my business partner, Christina,

00:51:53and go, could you imagine, like imagine if there was a podcast, and we had it in Boston.

00:51:58Boston is like the home of higher education globally.

00:52:01Think about all of the research done here and the universities, like 52 second,

00:52:07like two-year schools and trade schools and colleges and universities in the greater Boston area.

00:52:12There's all these labs and biotech and research and number one research hospitals in the world.

00:52:17Like imagine if there was a podcast.

00:52:21It felt like a walk with a friend.

00:52:22It wasn't like scientists talking to each other.

00:52:24It was like friends talking.

00:52:27But we were inviting these world-class experts and thinkers and researchers

00:52:33to just hop on over to our studios, and then we get to share this for free with the world.

00:52:38Wouldn't that be cool?

00:52:39That's how it began.

00:52:40Yeah.

00:52:41And a lot of people are like, well, there are no podcasts in Boston.

00:52:45Like it's really Austin and LA and New York where the big shows are.

00:52:51Don't you love to prove that you can do whatever you want to do?

00:52:55Well, you know, I think that it's an important note because especially if you're a new listener

00:53:01and you're discovering it because it's one of the most successful podcasts in the world,

00:53:07you don't realize that it began like everything with a imagine if.

00:53:14Imagine if.

00:53:16And without opening up your mind to that question and without giving yourself permission to dwell in possibility.

00:53:29I love that, dwell in possibility.

00:53:32That's beautiful.

00:53:33It will never be.

00:53:34I love that.

00:53:36It's just a want or a desire that you're keeping trapped.

00:53:41Yeah.

00:53:41And it's in there.

00:53:43And so I only say that just because without allowing that possibility to exist,

00:53:54even as just an idea among friends.

00:53:56Yeah.

00:53:57There is no change that you're going to make.

00:53:59Well, I think people sometimes wait for opportunity as opposed to creating opportunity.

00:54:08Say more about that.

00:54:09What's the difference between waiting for opportunity versus just becoming the kind of person that can create opportunity?

00:54:16When you're waiting for opportunity, you are passively waiting for things to come your way

00:54:21and hoping that things will come my way.

00:54:24I'm hoping that this will happen.

00:54:25I'm praying for that to happen.

00:54:27And I'm desperate for that to happen.

00:54:31But you can also look at it from another perspective.

00:54:34I want this so much.

00:54:35I'm going to create this opportunity for me to try to make it happen.

00:54:41Now, there's no guarantee ever.

00:54:42But if you try, you have more chances of being able to manifest that than if you were waiting.

00:54:50It's true.

00:54:52You know, I'm prepping for this conversation with you.

00:54:54A bunch of our producers on the podcast tried the exercise.

00:54:59And a lot of them, especially the producers who are in their mid to late 20s, found it extremely stressful to even ask themselves the question,

00:55:12imagine waking up and you're 10 years older.

00:55:15What does your life look and feel like?

00:55:16Where do you live?

00:55:17What do you see?

00:55:18What does it feel like?

00:55:19Why do you think it's so stressful to imagine your ideal future?

00:55:27I think it's particularly stressful now for people in their 20s because the world is so uncertain.

00:55:33And it's very hard in today's world where we are constantly being bombarded with the performative aspects of success, where success is made to look effortless and easily attainable.

00:55:51And that breaks my heart because I know very few people that have become successful easily.

00:56:02There's always the prodigy, but most people have to work really hard to get what they really want.

00:56:10Yeah.

00:56:10And it takes as much work to get the work.

00:56:15That's a lot.

00:56:16How do you cut through that and find that space of possibility?

00:56:19Because your dreams are still there.

00:56:21It's almost like what you're saying is the acute amount of pressure and overwhelm and uncertainty and options that are before you make you question the possibility even more?

00:56:32Yeah, absolutely.

00:56:34And that's when you have to double down on what you think you can create in your life.

00:56:41And I say that word create very intentionally because you are making it up as you go.

00:56:47And this is an opportunity to give yourself permission to assume that you could have a life of contentment and peace.

00:56:59And beauty and love and all those things.

00:57:03What about somebody who feels this conflict that, well, shouldn't I care more about the environment?

00:57:11Shouldn't I care more about the issues of the world?

00:57:14Like, why should I be thinking about the kind of life or house or all that stuff?

00:57:18Like, why does it matter to design a life that makes you content and that allows you to dwell in what's possible in a world that feels like it's spinning out of control?

00:57:34This isn't about designing a life of extravagance.

00:57:38This isn't about, at least from my perspective, designing a life of consumerism, of rampant consumerism.

00:57:49I actually think that that's sort of the opposite of what I want to be able to encourage people to do with this.

00:58:00This is about how do I want to feel in 10 years?

00:58:04And the more content you are, the more of service you can be to others.

00:58:10And for me, being of service to others and being able to help people avoid some of the mistakes that I made, or at least giving them a sense of perspective about what it means to live a life with meaning, then I've done my job.

00:58:34Yeah, I'm sure you've had so many students go through this exercise, and they just don't know what they want.

00:58:41They know they're unhappy, but they're not sure what they want.

00:58:45Is there any prompt or anything that really allows somebody to start to move themselves forward with the exercise and visualizing it?

00:58:57Often I'll ask somebody, what are you jealous of?

00:59:00Who do you admire?

00:59:01What can you learn from those people?

00:59:05What is that jealousy telling you you want to do?

00:59:09And that's sometimes hard for people to understand.

00:59:11Nobody wants to admit to being jealous.

00:59:14But in the privacy of their own essay, if they think about what it is that somebody else has that they really want, it might give them some clues about what they think they can try for.

00:59:28So let's say that we've done the exercise, you've written this out, you have read it out loud.

00:59:38You know, I'd love to hear how once you do that, because it does work.

00:59:44Absolutely.

00:59:45My life, the things that I've created in my life in the last 15 years are a function of that.

00:59:52Now, you still have to show up every day and do the grueling, boring things of walking toward it as the small things start to appear in your life.

01:00:02How do you balance kind of that dreaming big and imagining possibility and being realistic?

01:00:14Or should we not even think about it in those terms?

01:00:16I don't balance that at all.

01:00:18Realism has to go away.

01:00:20Has to go away.

01:00:21If your dream is to win lotto, that is where I think the line in the sand is in terms of realism.

01:00:32That then becomes magical thinking, because it's an external thing.

01:00:36You can't make that happen.

01:00:39You can't create that.

01:00:40It's not a process of making.

01:00:42Other than that, I think dream big, dream wild.

01:00:48I love that.

01:00:50I absolutely love that.

01:00:51So no realism.

01:00:53No realism, no probability, no process.

01:00:56What do you think the most important thing that you can do after you write it down is to actually make it happen?

01:01:03Read it and put it away.

01:01:04Put it away?

01:01:05Yeah, put it away.

01:01:07Read it again in a year.

01:01:08And when things start to happen, is it important to acknowledge that it's happening?

01:01:16Is it important to claim that these small signs are happening?

01:01:22I wouldn't necessarily claim it in a public way.

01:01:27I think it's a lovely way to reassure yourself that you've done something meaningful for yourself, and you can appreciate that in yourself.

01:01:38But I think it's also a very private, soulful experience in a lot of ways, because it's not about humble brag or brag or comparison.

01:01:54It's really about a manifestation, and I think there's something really quietly powerful in that.

01:02:02Yeah, I'm thinking a lot even about my mother-in-law, who's 86, because what she says all the time is she wants to make it to everybody's wedding.

01:02:14And when she says everybody, if they choose to get married, but she would like to make it to all nine of her grandkids' wedding.

01:02:23Yeah.

01:02:23And it's one of the reasons why she walks like five miles a day.

01:02:26Good for her.

01:02:27Wow.

01:02:27But there is an encoding and an imagining what's possible versus dismissing it by saying, well, the youngest is 20, you don't know, or they got, you know what I'm saying?

01:02:40Yeah.

01:02:40And so the invitation here is to dwell in possibility, is to allow yourself to imagine.

01:02:47And if somebody is listening right now, and they're kind of still in that camp of, does this really work?

01:02:54Is this for me?

01:02:55Like, is this really for anybody of any age?

01:02:59I don't see any restrictions to hope.

01:03:02One thing that I do want to share with you is that there's a common statement that people make when they're trying to do something.

01:03:18And people say, well, fake it till you make it.

01:03:21And I don't believe in that.

01:03:22I feel that that's very inauthentic.

01:03:25I say, make it until you make it.

01:03:29If you fake it until you make it, you're pretending.

01:03:33If you're working at making it until you make it, you're part of the process.

01:03:40You're intentional.

01:03:41You're designing your life when you're making it until you make it.

01:03:45And that, for me, between making it until you make it and being happiest making things feels like where the threads of my life dovetail.

01:03:56And where this process actually helps you.

01:03:59Yeah.

01:03:59To start today making what you want.

01:04:03You know, you've been teaching this process for years.

01:04:07What have some of the students that you've taught this design your life process to written to you years later to say?

01:04:16So I've been doing this now for about 45, 50 classes with an average of 18 to 25 students per class.

01:04:26And I get emails, I sometimes get cards in the mail where they share how this exercise created their lives.

01:04:41Because they designed this essay and wrote this essay with their hearts open and 5, 8, 10, 12, 15 years later.

01:04:54They've manifested either the most important things or everything or it gave them a sense of what they didn't want and then what they could redesign.

01:05:05Because redesigning is as much fun as designing in a lot of ways and makes my heart sing.

01:05:18It's beautiful.

01:05:20It's so beautiful.

01:05:21And then those people can help other people do it.

01:05:26And so on and so on and so on and so on.

01:05:28Well, that's why I'm so excited that you're here because I see this conversation as an invitation to not only allow you to dream and dwell in possibility and take the invitation to intentionally design the life that you want seriously.

01:05:52But I'm also super excited because, you know, as you watch this or as you listen to this, you're not only going to do it for yourself, but every person that you care about that you share it with, you are sharing that invitation to be able to do that same process for somebody else.

01:06:11Yes. Yes.

01:06:13And what an incredible gift that is.

01:06:16Incredible.

01:06:16So, Debbie, if the person with us does just one thing after hearing everything that you've shared with us, what do you think the most important thing to do after listening or watching this is?

01:06:32I would say just give it a shot.

01:06:35Give it a shot.

01:06:36You'll learn something about yourself.

01:06:38And isn't that the greatest gift we can give ourselves?

01:06:42Well, thank you for giving us a process and a very specific thing that we can do to help us do that.

01:06:52My pleasure.

01:06:53Debbie Millman, what are your parting words?

01:06:56Well, I'm going to use this as an opportunity to ask a question I ask of myself almost every day.

01:07:04If not now, when?

01:07:07If not now, when?

01:07:08You're incredible.

01:07:14Well, you bring out the best in people, Mela, I have to tell you.

01:07:17You really do.

01:07:18You give people an opportunity to shine.

01:07:22Well, that's all I wanted you to do.

01:07:24I've admired your work for years.

01:07:26You have been on the list of guests.

01:07:30Since the beginning.

01:07:30And so I'm glad that we could get you here to Boston and have you teach this life-changing method and to learn from the lessons of your life and from what you've been teaching students.

01:07:45And so I just, from the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of the person that's been listening or watching and spending time with us together, I just thank you.

01:07:54Thank you for the work that you do.

01:07:55Thank you for being here.

01:07:56Thank you for sharing this process with us.

01:08:00Because I think everybody deserves to design the life that they want.

01:08:06I really, really hope so.

01:08:08Well, we now know how to do it.

01:08:12And so I want to make sure to tell you, if not now, when.

01:08:16And as your friend, I'm going to tell you, today.

01:08:19Today is the day that I want you to crack open the book and answer these questions for yourself.

01:08:25Because there is no doubt in my mind, if you do, you will actually be creating the life that you want.

01:08:30And in case nobody else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you as your friend that I love you and I believe in you.

01:08:35And I believe in your ability to create a better life.