How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over | The Mel Robbins Podcast

you ever thought to yourself gosh I wish I wasn't on my phone so [Music] much I wish I wasn't constantly wasting time scrolling the research shows that the average person in the United States is spending 7 hours a day consuming media on your phone 7 hours a day it has snuck up on you and it did it on purpose but here's the problem if you don't understand that you're supposed to use this as a tool you become the tool so if you're ready to stop letting your brain be hijacked by big Tech and by your

phone then you are in the right place because I'm about to change the way you see the world hey it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robins podcast I am so excited that you're here and I'm also so excited about the conversation today this is a topic I am absolutely passionate about I have so much to share with you to teach you to have you just really it's the kind of conversation that just makes you look at the world and what's possible differently and so let me just start by saying thank you for

being here it is always such an honor to spend time with you and to be together and if you are a new listener I also want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family I am glad that you're here and because you made the time to listen to this particular episode here's what I know about you even though we may not have met in real life yet I know that you're the kind of person who probably doesn't have a lot of free time but you've made time to listen to

this because you value how you spend your time and that's what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about time and we're going to talk about a particular kind of Lane on it that's really important see you and I and every single person that you know is screwing themselves over right now when it comes to time when it comes to energy when it comes to attention and there's a reason why we keep doing this to ourselves and here's why it's because you don't realize that the world that you now live in and

big Tech and in particular let me grab my phone right now I'm going to grab my phone that your phone is now designed for a singular purpose you ready it is designed to to steal your time and attention yeah yeah yeah everybody can Market everything about connection and all the wonderful things about your phone and the internet and social media and it's true there's a lot of wonderful things about your phone but the number one thing that this phone is designed to do is it is designed to steal your time and attention and this is

a really big deal by the time you and I are done talking today today you will never actually look at your phone the same way again and this is important because you do need to change the way that you look at your phone I'm going to explain that the world and Tech and the phone and social media holy cow in the last five years it is completely changed and you and I need to have a huge wakeup call because when I paint the picture of what this phone is actually designed to do it's going to

change your motivation for how you use it and when you use it and you know I've been talking about this topic it's called the attention economy for years I mean I've been traveling the world you and I may just be kind of getting to know each other through the Mel Robbins podcast but for almost a decade I spent most of my career traveling around the world and speaking at huge events being put on by some of the biggest brands in the world talking about all kinds of things from Behavior change to motivation and a really

big topic has been understanding the way that technology in the phone in particular is designed to steal your attention and your focus because you and I now live in What's called the attention economy and this is important for you to understand it's important for your middle schoolers to understand for your high schoolers for the 20s somethings Heck if you've got aging parents that are now addicted to their iPad or their phone it's important for them to understand we live in a whole new world we live in What's called the attention economy now what does that

mean here's what it means it means your attention is for sale that the time that you spend watching media scrolling through your phone tapping on certain things buying things that you don't need that everybody is making money off of your attention and your time that you don't have to get on your phone and buy something for people to make money you simply sitting on your phone and mindlessly scrolling and having it on people have figured out how to make money with you simply having the phone on and so takeaway number one is that your phone

is designed to steal your attention for one reason and one reason only because people are making money on you it's that simple they're making money on you and I'm going to unpack this in detail so that you really understand what your phone is what it isn't and that from this point forward even if you're in middle school and you're listening to me or you're 80 years old and you're listening to me or you're 50 years old and you're frustrated because you can't get your family to just connect over dinner because everybody's on their phone well

the reason why this is true is because the phone is designed to keep you on it like that's what you have to understand that the rules have fundamentally changed and not enough of us are talking about it I didn't figure this out until a couple years ago when I started looking into the research around focus and attention and I started folding in information about the attention economy and the way that the phones are designed because I started to feel concerned about my own use on the phone I started to be frustrated with the fact that

my kids were so on their phones all the time it's like what's going on with this generation and then I started to feel frustrated about the fact that everybody around me is constantly on their phones and myself included and see here's the thing like I think you've had that experience haven't you where you know it's not good for you you know you don't want to spend as much time on it you know that when you're off your phone you feel better you're happier you're more well rested we also know the simple stupid advice for how

it is that we can stop using it so much and yet none of us do it and so I started to wonder well why why is it so hard there must be something going on the truth is yeah there is something going on and this is going to be a huge thing you've already learned one takeaway so far which is you now live in the attention economy your phone is designed to keep you on it because even if it's just open people have figured out how to make money with you just turning this thing on

and having it in your hand I mean this is no joke and that's why we're going to unpack the way that the world has changed and what's happened with the phone and how Tech is designed and how social media is designed and how ads are designed and how headlines are written they are specifically designed to screw you over to have you just casually turn over your most precious thing in life which is your time and your attention where you put your time is what your life is and you know you don't probably know this your

kids don't know this the young adults in your life don't know this your parents don't know this and that's why you're frustrated I was frustrated too you know the research around this is kind of crazy did you realize that you're probably spending seven hours a day consuming media on your phone and if you were just like no no I'm not no I'm not uh yeah you are is your phone on you do you look at it throughout the day every time you turn it on you're activating the phone's ability to make money on you even

simply if it's tracking you guess what there are companies making money on the data that's tracking you and listening to you as you have it near you even if you're not correctly consuming media that's what I'm talking about and so if you've ever had that thought boy I wish I would just spend less time on my phone or I wish I wasn't wasting hours scrolling on social media or how about this do you feel like you're constantly buying things that you didn't actually mean to buy you know the thing that's laying around downstairs that I

can't find the actual company to be able to return the thing to is I bought a bunch of those bird feeders that have the little um camera in them they were all over my Instagram feed oh my god I've got like two extra ones here I don't even remember buying them probably because I bought it one night while I was scrolling through Instagram and the phone was on and I even know that it is the attention economy and I still succumb to it and the reason why I wanted to talk to you about this is

because this is a really big deal the research shows that the average person in the United States B based on the devices themselves is spending seven hours a day consuming media on your phone s hours a day that's 59 hours a week 59 hours just looking at your TV and your phone you got to be very careful about the addictive nature of this freaking device and how people are using you because when you wake up and are like wait a minute I'm getting used then I think you're going to have a different level of motivation

around your boundaries with this phone and so first things first we're going to spend a lot of time talking about what is it about the attention economy and the way that this thing is designed that has changed what do you need to know because when you look at the world differently I think you show up to the world differently and if you find that you keep thinking God I wish I would spend less time on my phone or your kids are like I wish I spent less time on my phone but you just can't like

for example have you ever deleted Tik Tok and then you just download YouTube or then you delete YouTube and then you download Tik Tok again if you have been the kind of person have you ever set limits on your apps right and then you just tap out of the notification guilty or if you can't watch TV while not also scrolling on Instagram I mean this is something we're all struggling with and you're struggling with it not because you're weak you're struggling with it because that's sign that the phone is winning the phone is winning the

game the phone is changing your brain the phone is getting you to just step right into the Trap so that it can make money on you mindlessly if you can't stand in a line at a grocery store or do chores or take a walk or even go to the bathroom without watching a video or listening to something or reading something on your phone then you're in the right place and I just want to ask you five questions okay five questions that reveal the truth that technology has won this round of the game because the way

that the phone and social media is engineered and the way that people make money on your attention it has changed you so let me ask you these five questions number one is your phone the first thing you reach for every day do you ever find yourself checking the same apps over and over and over again for notifications even though there aren't any are you unable to sit take a walk do chores or even exist without consuming content you know watching a video checking a text looking for something does the idea of going somewhere without your

phone make you anxious or uncomfortable and finally do you find yourself getting to the end of a long day using Doom scrolling as just a way to unwind and relax only to find that you feel exhausted depressed or empty afterwards if you answered yes to any of these five questions this is a sign that the phone and social and big Tech has actually won this round of the game I want to be very clear about something this isn't your fault it's not your fault if you're frustrated like I was frustrated with my family I'm like

why are you guys always on your phone look at me when you're talking to me what what's wrong with this generation if you've ever felt that way it's not their fault either it's not your teenagers fault that they're constantly online they need to be on social media they're constantly wanting to do something it's not your fault if all you want to be in life is an influencer because that's what you see other people doing online and and you see them making money and you see them going on trips and you like heck even your aging

parents are now addicted to their phones and their iPads and it's not their fault either not at all see we have all been duped by the big Tech programming and the attention econom that we live in your phone social media the news cycle everything about the role that technology is playing in your life right now accept this fact it has not been designed for an altruistic reason it has been designed to hijack your brain it is designed to steal your attention and see the reality is that you and I have been tricked into participating in

and being used for a game that you and I didn't even know we were playing you know you and I look at the phone and we're like oh this is great this is really great I love this I can connect with people and I post and it is great but if you don't realize that you've been lured into something for the sole purpose that you might buy something or that you might stay a little longer so that somebody can make money on you then you are stepping into a game and you will always lose and

I'm going to give you a couple examples so if you ever gotten off an airplane and you get off an airplane like especially if you land in a new country or you're going somewhere where there's like like Orlando you're going to go to Disney World when you get off that plane they purposefully move you through a section of the airport where there's all kinds of stuff to buy and the hallways are really little so that all you do is see stuff to buy and here's another example have you ever been to a museum and when

you get out of the exhibit where do they put you they put you in the gift store and they don't just put you in the gift store by the exit they force you to walk through the whole thing and see all this kind of stuff why are they doing that they are doing that because they're trapping you in a place where they have your attention in the hopes that if they put stuff in front of you you're going to buy it and the longer that you stay in there which is why it takes a long

time to walk through it you know who else does this AA have you ever tried to get out of an AA store for crying out loud quickly you can't they make you literally walk two miles through every single display why because they're trying to hold your attention the longer that you're in there the more likely you're going to see something that you buy the more time that you spend in there the more money they make and they're not doing this because they're mean they're doing this because they're a for-profit company the same thing is true

about the phone and that's why number one my number one goal today there's a number of things I want to teach you is I want you to wake up and understand that if you don't see the game you don't understand the rules you're going to lose the game full stop full stop that's why you're screwing yourself over it's because you don't understand the larger context of your phone and headlines that's why they're Sensational I mean that's why the the the news reads like the world is falling apart because if you think it's scary if you're

worried and your emotions start to get all jacked up you're more likely to click that's why the world and the internet and social media they're designed on purpose to steal your attention and that's why we we have gotten to a point in the world where we are all losing the game of attention and you lose first and for most by not even realizing that you're actually playing a big game and here's the thing you know I should say right off the bat I have a lot of mixed feelings about this because on one hand I

do believe that the phone and internet and social media these are extraordinary tools they are extraordinary tools to connect to share your art to Market your business to be self-expressed they extraordinary tools to get information to learn to grow um you can connect with people all around the world I mean they are incredible the reason why I can connect with you right now from above my garage in southern Vermont you're maybe halfway around the world is because of Technology because of the phone because of the internet because of social media so yes they are extraordinary

tools but only if you use it as a tool right see it's a great tool if every time you reach for this you recognize you're the one who's using it intentionally as as a tool and here's the problem the problem is you and I became the tool M we weren't paying attention we were busy living Our Lives we were enjoying laughing about the things that we saw on the internet and slowly what started to happen is we started spending more and more and more time on our phones I mean just a put this in perspective

the first iPhone was released in 2007 so we're talking like almost 20 years ago and over the years like when this first thing like started and we all had it for the first five 10 years whatever it wasn't on your person all the time you weren't texting all the time you weren't on social media all the time but something kind of creepy has happened over the last couple years absolutely everybody is on their phone all the time it's like some sort of addictive substance has been pumped into the oxygen that we're all breathing and now

we're all like oh well wake up look at the phone always look at the phone I got to have the phone on me got we're all doing it and so I today I really want to share all this information with you and you can tell that I'm very passionate about this I'm passionate about it because you know everybody is quick to go social media sucks the internet sucks you know big Tech sucks and on some level you're right it does but part of the problem is simply blaming social media and blaming the internet and blaming

the phone it doesn't highlight what's actually going on and I said that I had mixed feelings about this because I do I do see the good I see be the good that the phone and the internet and connection and social media and videos and information and tools that are powered by AI I see the good but here's the problem if you don't understand that you're supposed to use this as a tool you become the tool you become a tool in a larger game that big Tech built that the internet is fueling and it is a

game that is built designed and it is engineered to make you lose like I literally look at the phone and I'm like okay it's like the Hunger Games and I'm the tribute that's volunteered and I'm now stepping into the arena anytime I pick this up and it's a fight for my life and if you don't understand this you're literally screwing yourself over it's like walking into the Hunger Games Arena thinking that you're just kind of going on a camping trip no you're not like seeing what it is is the most important way to protect yourself

seriously I want you to look at your phone and go oh my gosh I'm like stepping into the Hunger Games Arena right here and only one person is going to get out alive it's either me or it's the billion people that are inside this Arena that are trying to claw for my attention and I want to paint it in such dramatic ways because have you ever stopped and considered that this device is using you mhm that it is a device that uses you it listens to you it follows you it dynamically changes what it shows

you it is constantly pushing stuff in your face to click on or to purchase or to watch and why is it doing that I'll tell you why because there's money to be made on you and so I want you to be very clear that every time you pick this thing up that you are stepping into the Hunger Game ring that's what's happening and if you pick up the device with eyes wide open guess what happens you're no longer the tool you're no longer the one that is going to lose you are picking up this device

knowing full well what you're walking into and you're going to be smart about what you use this for rather than allowing it to use you which is what's happened and I think this is why when we look at everybody around us we get so frustrated because you can see that your kids and your partner and your roommates they've all turned into zombies I mean how many times have you been sitting around with your friends from college and everybody's on their phone and you're thinking why do we even get together this weekend if we're all just

going to sit around on our phones well that can end now it can end now because what you're seeing when you see people zoning out is you're seeing that the attention economy has won you're seeing that they've stepped into the arena and they're losing the game you're seeing that the intentional design of the phone is actually winning and that's one of the reasons why I think it's so important to call out the fact that this is all by Design and it's all based for money that's what it's for and the reason why this is important

is because I think it's easy to aim your frustration at your kids or to aim it at other people or to aim it at your partner that you're frustrated that they're always on their phone and they're never present with you well the fact is they're losing a game that they don't even realize they're playing and I want you to start there because blaming other people and being upset with them isn't going to solve the problem problem understanding the larger context is the first step to going and looking at your phone and be like H ick

like how cool would it be if you had the ick about your phone technology and social media and the phone and internet and AI all this stuff is a wonderful thing if you understand it's meant to be used as a tool but if you don't understand the larger context that I'm painting for you that your phone is designed to make money off of you and it makes more money off of you the longer you spend on it if you don't understand that then you are going to lose and this isn't just social media I mean

this is happening with AI too like you know and and what's kind of crazy about this is you know let me tell you some of the lies that are happening with AI right now I think this is kind of scary like I literally was talking with my team the other day and I don't even remember what we were talking about oh like I guess if you Google my name which which I don't do but if you Google is Mel Robbins divorced right go to Google and you go is Mel Robbins divorced do you know you

know how when you Google something now ai like generates a answer and what's scary about AI is that it's generating answer from stuff that's out on the internet and since there's no internet police the amount of random disgusting horrible lies that are out on the internet about everybody and everything it's kind of terrifying and now we're stepping into a world where we think chat GTP is right we think open AI is giving us the best answer no no no no they're just aggregating what's out there and serving up something so if you go and you

type in is Mel Robbins divorced AI is going to tell you I'm divorced I it literally says Mel Robbins is divorced and then you want to know what it does it serves up a link to a podcast episode of my podcast where I am giving someone advice who is going through a divorce so AI has aggregated information that's out there randomly assembled it and served it up as the truth about me it's not true it's not true like anybody can make up anything about anybody and it's now out there and so I say this because

you have to understand and I have very mixed feelings about technology about the internet and one of the reasons why I'm so successful is because I understand technology I use it as a tool and I have also become more successful in having boundaries with my phone not because I'm reading research reports and not because I'm you know doing the things that the experts tell us to do I have better boundaries with my phone because I understand the manipulative nature of the attention economy and the way that this phone and the internet is programmed to keep

you sucked into it because the longer you spend on it the more money some strer makes off of you it's true it's absolutely true and so if you want to spend 7 hours a day consuming things on your device just be clear somebody is making a ton of money on you and you're telling yourself that you're just wasting time nope you're not just wasting time you're actually making people money because that's what this is really about the more more time you spend on social media the more money big Tech and influencers make and I'm going

to tell you something else it's not your fault it's not your fault this is sort of like saying to somebody it's your fault that you're addicted to cigarettes no it's not you had an addictive substance marketed to you as if it was going to improve your life because it looks like fun and now you feel bad because you can't stop smoking even though you don't really enjoy it and you've got this horrible cough and you got all these people judging you because you're still doing it and you feel ashamed of it but it's not your

fault it's designed to be addictive same thing with alcohol alcohol is marketed to you and me as if it's required for a celebration as if it does make your life better and so if you have trouble cutting back or having just one drink or drinking less that's not your fault the substance and the industry has designed it that way so that you keep doing it and when you start from that level that it's actually not your fault now you have a fighting chance to look at this device and to look at the way that you

consume media with very black and white eyes and so the more time you spend on social media the more money big Tech and influencers make so let me just ask you a couple questions when's the last time you saw posts that were of your friends on Instagram like for real when's the last time if you're like me I never see my friends or my kids online ever and and I've even gone and and kind of clicked them as my close friends right which I thought meant I would see them more no you know what I

see I see ads almost every other thing that comes in my feed is a suggested for you so it's something getting served up or it's a shop now and then what ends up happening and and it might happen to you because you're listening to this podcast and you may follow me online and if you do follow me and you happen to watch one one real you know what going to happen they're going to keep serving up my content to you why because the machines that are trying to keep you on it remember you're in The

Hunger Games remember you're in the arena they're going to serve up more of the things that I make to you because they now think you like it and within a week you're going to start going God does Mel ever sleep I mean it's like all I see is her all over well that is the arena because it's trying to keep you on it this to me is manipulation If This Were an altruistic platform you know what social media would do it would just show you what people post in a linear timeline when they post it

and it would show you just as as many posts from the rock as it shows you your friends and family but see that's why I'm trying to tell you you're the tool like you and I go on to the phone and we think oh I'm gonna go on social media and just pass a little bit of time and I'm G to have some fun be careful you can certainly do that but this is going to try to manipulate you like it's just like being in Vegas if you've ever been in a casino in order to

get to any of the restaurants or to get to the elevator what do you have to do you have to walk through the casino and what is in the casino it's bright lights it's Bells it's whistles it's all this stuff trying to manipulate you so that you engage with it see whenever you're bored now you pick up your phone whenever the movie is not that interesting you pick up your phone whenever the teacher in front of the class isn't saying something that interesting you look at your phone when you're lying in bed and you're having

trouble going to sleep you look at your phone if you're sitting at a stoplight you're looking at your phone Heck if you're honest with yourself you're probably looking at it as you're driving as you're sitting on an airplane you're looking at the phone as you're sitting in a meeting you've got your phone like kind of beneath the table and you're checking it out every once in a while it has snuck up on you and it did it on purpose and that's why I need you and me and everybody that you care about that you're going

to send this to to actually wake up and recognize that this is not here because it wants to help you it's here to make money on you you know the sad thing about the time that we live in right now is I feel like everything's that way politics politics is now entertainment headlines same way the scarier it is the more you're going to keep checking them and if you want to see how much of a tool you've become just check your screen time like not even as a way to make you wrong but see I

don't think any of us realize how this has crept up on us and after just considering that you live in the attention economy and considering that everything is designed to keep you on it so that they make money you got to recognize that because the rules have changed you got to change your rules with how you play the game and you gotta see it for what it is and you got to take your power back and you got to go ick well I'm not going to be an idiot I'm not going to allow them to

just keep me trapped in this stuff so they make money I'm going to get in and then I'm going to get out and that's how I think about this how can I use this device and social media and the internet to actually help me achieve my goals how can I use this as a tool as it's designed to be used to benefit me instead of me being the tool and my use of it benefiting them do you see what I'm saying like being smarter about it allows you to change how you engage with it and

that's why I want you to think about this because that brings me to the second really important thing about understanding that you live in the attention economy your attention and time is for sale and the world is designed to steal it from you that's why you're tired that's why you spend too much time on your phone that's why you spend too many evenings just mindlessly watching one thing after the other thing because the game is designed for you to lose so now that you accept that and I hopefully have given you the factor and I've

woken you up to the fact that you do have power these are amazing tools you got to step into the arena get what you need and then get out the second thing I really want to highlight for you and for everybody that you're going to share this with is that there's a huge cost to playing the game a huge cost and the thing that you're about to hear because I wanted an expert to explain this to you because when I heard this from a guy by the name of Dr K he goes by the healthy

gamer online he is a Harvard trained psychiatrist who specializes in gaming addiction and he's also a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who has taught me more about the circuitry in the brain and motivation in a way that I truly understand better than anybody else that I've ever met or read or studied in my entire life what a lot of people don't realize is that you have a certain capacity for pleasure and behavioral reinforcement when you wake up in the morning you have only a certain number of units of pleasure in behavioral reinforcement got it so if I

have a cup of capacity for uh both pleasure and behavioral reinforcement you're saying that when you wake up that one cup is already full so our dopaminergic circuitry in the brain in this part called the nucleus accumbent basically this is what gives us a sense of pleasure and also reinforces our Behavior so the problem with dopamine is we wake up in the morning and our dopaminergic stores are full so what happens is we have a a reserve of dopamine and if you want something with delayed gratification and your dopamine stores are high you can work

a lot but then when you get the payoff since you have a bunch of dopamine you get a strong dopamine release and then you feel really good so the way that this works is like I want youall to think about this let's say I wake up first thing in the morning and then I work for 4 hours and then what is the reward the subjective reward that I feel after four hours of work it's really positive yeah then if I use technology for 4 hours it's kind of whatever but if I use technology for the

first four hours of the day and then I try to go and do work you're not going to you're not going to and even if you finish the same amount of work you will not experience the same level of pleasure because your dopamine has literally been depleted got it so the way that I kind of describe this is imagine that you have a lemon that is full of juice yep so at the very beginning when it's full of juice a small squeeze gets you a lot of juice but by the end you have to squeeze

a lot to get very little juice this is how dopamine is in our brain so in other words if you tap into technology and it invades your circuitry in your brain it literally is like squeezing most of the juice out of the lemon first thing in the morning first thing in the morning and then that means that it's also going to impact your ability to do the work or to focus or to feel Joy and all those things that that normally if you did those things first you'd feel a sense of reward and joy for

yes so technology is like a hard squeeze so if we use it first thing in the morning we squeeze the lemon really hard and we get all the juice out and then you have nothing left to feel good about because all of your dopamine stores have been depleted I want to make sure that you really understand the weight of what Dr K is trying to teach you and me because when he shared that with me it was such an enormous wakeup call that really helped me connect the dots and the whole purpose of our conversation

today is to give you a reason why you need better boundaries with your phone and Tech that you have to use it as a tool and you've got to stop allowing big Tech and social and the phone to turn you into the tool and so what Dr K just said is that you've got all of this dopamine reserve and dopamine circuitry in your brain and you've probably heard that word but you know I don't know if you're like me I'm constantly forgetting what these big words mean but dopamine is related to your drive it's related

to motivation it's related to pleasure and what Dr K is saying is that when you wake up first thing in the morning you're ready to go the gas tank and the Brain in terms of dopamine it's full the circuitry is ready to go it is primed and there to help you experience pleasure to help you move toward things that give you meaning in your life and then you and I make a really dumb mistake because we don't recognize the game that we're in we make this mistake first thing in the morning of picking up the

phone and then we get on social media and then we read the headlines and when you step into that arena in the words of Dr K technology in the phone and social media it's like taking the lemon that represents the dopamine and squeezing all the juice out so that by the time you start your day if you spent too long on your phone you've literally drained the dopamine tank simply by stepping into the arena and allowing yourself to be turned into a tool and now for the rest of the day you're playing catchup this is

why everything seems dull this is why you don't really feel the drive this is why your mood is kind of low and you're a little numb and this also then means that at the end of the day when you're done at school or you're done at work and you get home and you're done feeding the dogs and making dinner and you collapse on the couch all you want to do because you've got no dopamine left and you're not really feeling much of anything and you're exhausted is what pick this thing up again and you enter

the arena and you make people more money and then you just feel worse and I want to give you a little test to really just highlight for you why the phone is designed the way it's designed have you ever turned your phone to the grayscale feature it's it's pretty unbelievable when you move your phone to grayscale it is going to be so startling that you don't even need to hear research about this but I do have research and this research is unbelievable there was this study done between Cornell and researchers at IE University in Madrid

all about grayscale when people like you and me just switch the phone to black and white and grayscale it reduces your daily screen time by 50 minutes 50 minutes and you could use those 50 minutes right I mean I know I could use those 50 minutes but I want you to intentionally try to turn your phone to grayscale I'm not even going to ask that you leave it on grayscale I'm going to ask that you just try to find it which even as I'm talking to you I can't freaking find it on my phone that's

how they've hidden this but when you ultimately get your phone to grayscale you're going to look at it and be like ew well that's not fun to look at oh all those influencers don't look so tan and amazing and fabulous when it's on Gray scale oh like this isn't that neat to be in it's sort of like the same way a casino is bright and shiny and loud and you have to walk through it and you can't find the elevators which means you stay in it long enough because when you strip away the colors your

phone is very boring it's literally the difference between watching a movie that is 100% AI driven where somebody's arm twists into a snake and then it morphs into a cheetah and it's just this absolutely unbelievable visual just craziness versus thinking about the original Frankenstein movie that was black and white and amazing at the time but you're just now looking at it like is that my uncle dressed up in a suit for my party I mean that's that thing's pretty terrible you can barely even watch it and the reason why I'm saying this is because when

you strip away the colors on your phone you're going to get the chills because I think you know beautiful design is something that's exciting to see but holy cow when you just strip away all the bells and whistles you'll now see your phone for what it should be which is a tool a tool you can use to get work done a tool you can use to connect with people you care about a tool that you can use to search for information that you need that makes you smarter a tool that you can use to Market

but boy oh boy does it not make you want to stay on this thing because it's super boring and the reason why I'm telling you this now is because if it's super boring and sort of like G why would I want to use that I I don't want to hang out with an Excel spreadsheet all day I mean this is like what you'll also realize what Dr K is saying all the pretty colors and the moving things and the popups here and the thing over there and the scrolling that you're doing it's very stimulating and

it's also draining your dopamine which is keeping you on there and that means it's draining the reserves that you need for motivation and pleasure for the important things in your life and that brings me to another thing that I want to add to this conversation so we've already talked about the fact that you've got to wake up and recognize that you live in the attention economy and that Tech is designed to steal your attention and that you've become unknowingly and without consent a tool in someone else's game and the game is let's make money on

you so that's ick number one ick number two is that it's not just making other people money it's actually costing you something important it's costing you your dopamine reserves that first thing in the morning when you look at the stuff and you expose yourself to this Arena that you're stepping in where it's designed to make you lose you're not just losing time and attention and energy you're also losing your dopamine it's like that lemon hard squeeze gone and it's not your fault the whole game is rigged and that's why you feel how you feel and

you know the really awful part about all this is that it keeps you on it and addicted to it because if you're getting that hard squeeze on the lemon by looking at bright and shiny things guess what you're going to keep going back to it just like people keep going back to cigarettes and they keep going back to slot machines and they keep going back to alcohol because the game itself and the device and substance itself is designed to do this to you and that's why it's not your kid's fault it's not your fault it's

not anybody's fault but we have a responsibility to ourselves to wake up and recognize what's happening so that when the world that you see changes you change the way you see the world and you change the way that you show up Wayne DWI said that and it's time to change the way that you show up because the third thing I want to tell you is that it's actually already changed your brain this is not just a problem for the kids and the high schoolers and the college kids in your life most of us just don't

realize that it's happened to us too you know for example this is this is when I really first started to notice it for me personally like I I as I said earlier I've understood the attention economy and I've both understood it because I've been sucked into it and I also understand it because I'm an entrepreneur and I'm in the media business but for me personally this really started to hit me a couple years ago when I just started to practice being in line at a grocery store and not checking my phone it's a very hard

thing to do I want you to try this like just like you tried the grayscale the next time you're standing in line you're standing at a hardware store you're standing at a checkout line at a little corner store I want you to not look at your phone like keep it in your pocket or in your back pocket or in your purse and here's what you're going to notice you get fidgety you you feel this sense that you need to look at it you're going to feel yourself looking around and you're going to notice everybody else

that's standing in line unless they're talking to a child they literally are looking at their phones and then when you see other people looking at their phones you are going to start to really feel like you need to be looking your phone this is a sign that all of this intentional programming and Engineering is working because it's changed the wiring in your brain and it's made you want and crave something that you don't need you know another example is can you watch television without having your phone nearby like how quickly when the series that you're

watching gets slow do you reach for your phone I'll give you one more one more this is the big one do you lay in bed and look at your phone does the idea of even going to bed without your phone nearby make you feel agitated and this is not just a problem for teenagers I have a really close friend of mine who was telling me that they're very worried about their father because he since retiring has become addicted to his iPad like he literally sits with it and rocks as he's watching it all day he

goes to bed with it the man is 80 years old it is creating huge problems in his marriage of 45 years he's addicted to a thing that's actually designed to be addictive and you're watching your father pull away from Life while other people make more and more and more money on him that's what's happening and if you can't see that for yourself that the game is rigged to keep you playing that's why you feel these things that's why you and I stay longer on our phones than we intend to that's why eventually you open up

your wallet and you're clicking shop now and you're buying all this stuff that you didn't intend to and while this is not good news that it's engineered to change you and keep you addicted and these small examples that I'm pointing out are evidence that it's true the good news is that your brain has something called neuroplasticity which I'm sure is a word that you've heard it's just a fancy word that means your brain can change it's bendy it can create new connections just like your brain learned that it needs the phone to go to bed

it can learn that it doesn't go to bed with the phone you can retrain your brain you can train your brain to see the phone and go dick just like an old boyfriend or girlfriend you know have you ever had a relationship in the past where or a friend that you were super super close with and then you started to kind of feel like oh I'm spent a little bit too much time with them but you keep spending time with them and then all of a sudden something happens you're like G that's what I want

you to feel about the phone that's what I want you to feel every time you play The Hunger Games and you step into the arena that is social media media AI or the internet I want you to see it for what it is because when you see the game for what it is you can actually now play the game and win and that brings me to the final thing what to do what do you do what do you do now that you hopefully have the ick and if you're younger and you're listening to this and

you still have aspirations of having an online business and you still have aspirations of becoming an influencer or a YouTuber that's great you you can do whatever you want with your life but you will make more money and be more successful if you go into those professions understanding that this is a tool that your phone is a device and that you don't collapse who you are and the meaning in your life with your I and job and wanting to use the tool for marketing or learning how to make money online it's an incredible thing to

do and if you're listening to me and you're a realtor or you have a side hustle you should be using the phone and the internet and social media as a tool but what's going to make you wildly successful is understanding that you're the one in charge and here's what you're going to do and I'm almost embarrassed to give you the advice right because you already know the advice but the thing about advice is it's easy to know what to do you know because we've all been told you got to have less screen time right got

to have you got to spend less time on the phone okay thanks Sherlock I think I'm aware of that now that Mel has explained attenion economy and the fact that I've been losing the game and the fact that this is designed to steal my time and the fact that I'm losing dopamine and that my brain has been rewired now I have a reason why I actually want to do something and so I'm just going to give you the things that have mattered to me because there's lots of things that you can do but there's really

one major thing that I think is super important and that is boundaries I want you to have very clear boundaries with your phone and the only thing that has helped me is physical separation I've tried to limit the screen time and to put the timers on I just suspend the notifications I have moved my apps from the home screen to pages in it just ends up making me scroll More For Real the grayscale and going black and white that's a big deal because it's not that fun to be on the phone and it reminds you

that this is utility rather than addiction and a Time waster but the biggest boundary that's really worked for me is physical separation not having the phone on your body because I'm just like you are I I I have you know a need for the phone I'm addicted to the phone like I recognize that so if it's in my hand or on my body I will look at it and so physical acts of Separation have made a big difference in my ability to establish boundaries and not casually enter the arena so what does that look like

well the biggest boundary that I have I talk about it a lot and so you may have heard me say this but again this is a daily boundary I have to set set I don't take the phone into bed at night is as hard as it is I charge my phone in the bathroom because if this phone were next to me I would reach for it full stop I would I would so I make it very difficult to reach for it by having it separated from me that's number one number two I leave my phone

typically on my desk now I have my phone in my hand if you're watching on YouTube you've seen me holding this thing it's got a bright pink case all day long if I'm during work hours I keep my phone on my desk and I try not to have it on my person because if it's at my desk and then I go to a meeting I don't I'm not checking it if it's at my desk and I'm you know doing some work I'm not really looking at it if it's on my body I'm looking at it

um another thing that I do here's another physical boundary when I'm out taking a morning walk in particular my phone is zipped in my fanny pack yes I have a fanny pack the dog treats are in there but it's in my fanny pack or it's in a back pocket if I don't have that on me or it's in a zipped like pocket so that I'm not engaged with it I'm actually Pres with my surroundings I don't walk and hold it because why I'll look at it another boundary that's been a really important one for our

family is we do not allow phones at the dinner table period whether we're at home whether we're at a restaurant they're not allowed even resting on the table they are on your person like in a pocket or they are in your bag and it's made a big difference in just encouraging meaningful conversations and connections and the more you do that the more you're going to dedic at time to hobbies to interests to actually building the business to doing the art to marketing what you're working on instead of being the one that's being marketed to and

that's what's available to you it's time for you and I to wake up and be smart about what's actually happening and instead of being used by them how about you and I turn the tables and we use them to achieve our goals and to make our lives a little bit better go look at everybody that you follow all the accounts and I promise you you're going to realize you only see the same five accounts over and over and over again because they're the ones that the social media platforms are serving to you because they think

you're going to stay on longer and that means they're going to make more money but if you are following somebody you're giving them access to your brain and your attention and that has value and so what I want you to do is audit who has access to that if the accounts that you're following do not give positive input they don't make you laugh they don't make you a better person they don't make you feel good Delete unfollow because it is a privilege for that account to be able to show up in your feed and when

you start treating the input as a tool like who can I follow that's going to make me better what accounts can I follow in order to grow and achieve my goals when you use it proactively that way you're not actually stepping into the arena waiting to be killed by everybody and waiting to be a tool in everybody else's game to make money you're actually stepping into the arena and selectively seeking out allies that now can help you achieve your goals and win the game and that's going to change all the time and look if you

follow me and I'm not lifting you up do not follow me that's how much I want you to truly honor your attention I want you to really look at it like a gift and the way that you win is by putting up a gate between you and who's allowed to put input into your brain that's how I think about the accounts that I follow are you actually making me better are you Lifting me up are you teaching me things or am I following you out of guilt or just because I followed you 10 years ago

or because we went to college together that's not what I'm doing in this Arena I'm looking for allies that make me better and that's what I want you doing too and you can curate your social media feed to uplift you rather than just constantly be staring at people that are trying to sell you something or bragging about their life or making you jealous of what they're doing get rid of those because all that negativity impacts you and there's one final thing that I think is super interesting that I want to unpack for you because it

brings us full circle and really helps you embrace the gravity of what's happened in the last five years and why this isn't your fault but how waking up and recognizing the attention economy and how it's impacted you has also robbed you of a lot of meaning in your life and I want to start that conversation by sharing a little bit of research with you that I found to be really important and this comes from a study uh that was done by researchers in China and they were looking at different interventions that could reduce symptoms of

internet addiction so everything that we're talking about here spending too much time on your phone too much time on social media Too Much Time online and what they found this was published in the Journal of addictive behavior is that one intervention that had very strong effects on reducing symptoms of internet addiction was exercise now it begs the question why why would introducing exercise reduce addictive behavior online well there's an important reason why moving your body is an important way to positively and naturally squeeze that little juice of dopamine it puts you in a better mood

and have you ever noticed that if you ever go out for a hike or you do a pickup soccer game or you're playing like you know a set of pickle ball you don't have any interest in looking at your phone because you're engaged in the physical activity like if I'm ever out skiing I'm not skiing down a mountain looking at my phone because I'm moving my body and I'm connected to the environment and so this is an important thing to understand because I think what's happening is as the rules of the game have changed and

we didn't realize that the phone has turned into Hunger Games and that it's designed for us to lose that it's created this self-fulfilling negative Loop where the more time you spend on the phone the less time you spend exercising or connecting with friends or doing the things that bring your life meaning like gardening and painting and picking up the guitar all those things that lift you up naturally you're not doing them why because you don't have time you're tired you're exhausted and all of this is a result of the freaking phone and social media so

just as it sapped you and sucked you in over the last five years and you spend more and more and more and more and more time on it it has left you more and more and more drained more blah more tired and with less time which means you don't have the time or the energy to do the things that gave your life true meaning and that's the most important epiphany of all is that here you and I are sitting there at the end of a long work day making ourselves wrong because we're exhausted and overwhelmed

and stressed out and we now just spent two to three hours Doom scrolling we've blown past our bedtime we feel bad that we just wasted that time and then we wake up tomorrow and instead of going out for a walk or changing our habits we just pick up the phone again and squeeze all the juice and the dopamine's gone again and here we are trapped in this trap and my huge huge number one thing is this is not your fault the systems designed to do this to you which is why you and I need to

wake up and we need to recognize that the phone and social media is now the Hunger Games that you and I became a tool that it stole everything for us but we do not have to live like that and big Tech and the phone and social it's not going to change in fact it's going to get worse and so Now's the Time to understand that this can be a tool it can be a tool for good for connection for growth for learning for art for making great money for making a difference in the world it

can be a tool for all kinds amazing things but only if you use it at that and so the more boundaries that you create with this the more you put it on grayscale the more you keep it off your person the more you look at it and go GH I'm not stepping into the arena now that I see what it is I'm not going to do that to myself what you're going to get back is kind of extraordinary number one you're going to get time back number two you're going to get energy back number three

you're going to get your dopamine reserves back which means your mood is going to get boosted and your energy is going to get lifted and so is your optimism and your excitement and you're going to recognize wow there's a lot of other things that I'd like to be doing with my life and the time that I have other than just giving it over to Big Tech so other people can make money on me so thank you thank you thank you for hitting play and thank you for sharing this with everybody in your life that you

care about that has a phone like I think this is one of those conversations that I truly hope travels around the world to everybody because waking up and understanding what's happening and seeing where you are not at fault but you've lost a little of your power also helps you take that power back because you do have power and I am so excited to see what happens in your life when you start using your phone and social media and the internet for good because you can and in case no one else tells you this I wanted

to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life and there is no doubt in my mind that the conversation that we just had will help you create a better life because you now see how the rules have changed you now see the game that's being played and once you see it you can change how you play the game which means you my friend are going to be winning at it all righty I will see you in the very next

episode I will be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play I'll see you there and for you oh my gosh I'm so happy you're here with me on YouTube it's not lost on me that you're actually watching this right on the internet but you understand the context and that means you can watch this and use the information to empower yourself you can choose to watch things that really lift you up and that's why I'm so proud to be here with you I am proud of the videos and the episodes that our team

is putting out here for you I'm proud of what we're doing here at the Mel Robbins podcast I love that you're a part of the family and I know you're like okay this has been great Mel what should I watch next well first things first I just want to tell you my goal is that 50% of the people that watch this YouTube channel and that watch the Mel Robins podcast are subscribers really helps the show it helps our team know what you're loving and it really supports Us in bringing you the best Possible episodes that

we can and so if you could hit subscribe thank you thank you thank you I know you're the kind of person that loves supporting people who support you thank you for supporting me and um that next video that you're going to watch is this one you're going to absolutely love it I'll be waiting in it the moment you hit play to welcome you in I'll see you there