Kay:

Hey, yo, questers welcome back. It is Monday, June 7th, and this is episode 371. I guess we’re going to call this Monday with Mel because today’s quote is from the one and only Mel Robbins. She tells us, “There’s one thing that is guaranteed to increase your feelings of control over your life: a bias toward action.”

Shi:

This is a great quote from a great woman. If you’re not familiar with Mel, she is the author of the book, The Five Second Rule. She’s also a lawyer, a television host, a radio host, a podcast author, and just a great plethora of offerings. The first way I got introduced to Mel was her Ted X talk, which is called ‘How To Stop Screwing Yourself Over.’ And it is really a great Ted talk. In fact, when I applied for my own TEDx talk way back in 2015, one of the questions they ask you on your application is: What is your favorite Ted talk? And I cited her. So we’ve been followers of Mel Robbins for a while.

Kay:

We love Mel. Uh, one of the things that I love about her too, is that she’s not the traditional success story. She started out on a career path. She rocked and rolled in her career, and then she hit depression. She hit alcoholism. She hit a lot of real challenges, postpartum depression, really in that kind of 25 to 40 years old area. And it wasn’t until she really hit her forties until she really got her stuff together. And that was at that point now where her career is taking off and things are rocking and rolling, but it wasn’t a straight line to success. And it had a huge pitfall right in the middle.

Shi:

She’s also got just kind of a really fun, I don’t want to call it edgy, but just like a no nonsense style and type, which is always a fun to listen to. But what’s great about this quote is the underlying principle of the idea that, if you want to have more control, take more action. What happens for me? I know, for many of us is that when we feel out of control, sometimes our, our, our knee-jerk reaction is to go into frozen mode, right? Like if you guys ever been there, like your inbox gets overwhelming or your tasks let’s get so long that you just kind of like

Speaker 3: Shut down.

Kay:

Cause the things are too difficult for you to handle. That’s exactly right. When you give your computer too many tasks, what it does to you is it shuts down. So sometimes your mind does that as well, but that bias toward action helps you to overcome that feeling of being out of control. And I don’t think anybody likes being out of control. In fact, entire mental illnesses are born out of the fact that humans like to be in control.

Shi:

And the only things you do have control of are what is inside of you, the choices you make, how you respond to things, what you choose to focus on, and what you choose to do about those things in the meaning that you assigned to them. And it really does boil down to that simple. But man, I get caught in the trap of trying to control the things around me, control my kids, control the circumstances, control my environment. And this is the reminder that if we want to have the feeling of control- take action! Because that at least produces motion. And when we’re in motion, we’re able to move things forward and progress forward. It’s kind of like that saying where headlights only show you the hundred feet in front of you, right? So how do you see the next hundred feet you move forward taking..

Kay:

Action. Doesn’t always mean yelling at your kids for the criticism that you feel like they could do better. Action doesn’t mean thinking about it. Action means: DO power. And the interesting thing about do-power is that you rarely want to do your do-power. Like it’s not something that a lot of people, I mean, at least at first are like, “Woo, I can’t wait to get in and sort out my filing cabinet.” Like you just, you don’t want to do that stuff. But if your filing cabinet feels out of control, the only thing that’s going to bring that control back in is the action that you likely don’t want to take.

Shi:

Then you get that internal debate and struggle happening of like, “Well, I should do that, but there’s more important things. There’s more pressing things. There’s more urgent things.” And so sometimes we can end up filling our coffers with action. That’s not the thing that’s going to get us that result that gives us that feeling of control. So kind of that resourced action, that focused action, is really what’s at the heart of the quote here and that quote again for you from the one and only Mel Robbins is, “There’s one thing that is guaranteed to increase your feelings of control over your life: a bias toward action.” Alrighty, guys, it is Mel Robbins Monday, get it done day!

Kay:

We want you to take control back by having a bias toward action. Yep. Today’s the big day to DO the thing! Start your week off strong. If you’ve maybe been procrastinating or put something off, we want to suggest that you try Mel Robbins five second rule, count yourself down to five and then take the action. Are you ready? Say it with us now..

Kay & Shi:

Let’s quest!