5 Rules That Will Change Your Life Immediately

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

Okay, I just left the studio, and I am telling you, this conversation that I just had, oh my gosh, I cannot wait for you to hear this.

People have told me that this guy that you're about to meet is sensational,

but I'd never met him until today.

He blew me away and he is going to blow you away too with what he is about to teach you today it is going to change the way that you think about failure success and how to live a happier and more creative life my guest today is the one and only mark rober he is the most watched science creator and educator on the planet with almost 72 million YouTube subscribers.

He's a former NASA and Apple engineer and the man behind some of the most legendary YouTube videos of all time.

This guy is a genius. He has the brilliant brain of a scientist with this generous heart of a teacher.
I just love him. Mark has spent his life turning failure into data.

setbacks into experiments and high pressure work into play.

And he has synthesized every single thing that he has learned into a few simple tools and strategies and frameworks that he's going to teach you today.

His personal framework rooted in engineering is going to help you achieve your goals, improve your habits, be happier, make better decisions, have more fun, and become more confident.

This is about thinking like an engineer, not to build rockets, but to build a better life.

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Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here.
It's such an honor to be together and to spend this time with you.

If you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this episode with you, I just wanted to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family.

I cannot tell you how excited I am about today's conversation and the simple tools and frameworks that will change the way you live. You're going to learn those from the one and only Mark Rober.

Mark is the most popular science creator and educator on the planet. His YouTube channel has almost 72 million subscribers.

Now, to put that into perspective, that's like saying one out of every four people in the United States is subscribed to his channel. That's crazy.

Mark is a mechanical engineer who earned his master's degree in engineering at the University of Southern California.

He then spent nine years at NASA, working on the team that built the Mars Curiosity rover. After NASA, Mark joined Apple's special projects team as a product design engineer.

And today, he's the founder and head engineer at Crunch Labs. But it was 14 years ago that his life changed when he uploaded his very first YouTube video.
And the rest is history.

So please help me welcome the incredible Mark Rober to the Mel Robbins podcast. Mark Rober in the house.
I'm so excited to be here. I am so excited to be here too.

You're like one of my heroes, like, you know, on like the digital front of like, I feel like we're kind of had similar stories.

So I feel like I'm in the room with like a hero that's very relatable to me. Well, I feel the same.
Okay. And you've made a huge impact in a lot of my

family members' lives. My nephew, my son is a monster fan.
I would not let him like skip college for the day to come in and meet you. I'm a mean mom.

But I would love to start, Mark, by having you tell me, how could my life be different if I take everything to heart that you're about to share and teach us today about failure, about creativity, about really being true to yourself and knowing who you are to heart.

And I apply it to my life. Yeah, I think something that's helped me a lot in life is like valuable frameworks, especially when looking at challenges and when looking at failure.

like viewing failure in a way that it's, it doesn't mean you are a failure, but you can, it almost flips it where it's exciting.

And like that approach to problems and challenges, seeing them as like exciting opportunities really is a framework thing that I've found has just been an incredible help in my life.

I personally love frameworks because it feels then like the things I need to do feel a little less. arduous and it doesn't feel like the things I screwed up are so personal.
Yes. And

I love

the idea that you have a framework to help make better decisions.

My favorite feeling truly is when that aha moment, when you like learn something new and you have a new framework and it allows you to kind of see the world.

We've all read a book or listened to a podcast that sticks with you and then changes. Heck, the book, Let Them, right? Is this for so many people? And I love that moment so much.

The only thing I love more is giving that to someone else. I love to be that conduit.
How do you describe what you do? You know what I mean?

For somebody who may be listening right now or watching right now, and they're like, I love this guy. Who's this guy? What's this guy do? Tell me more about this guy.

How would you describe what you do? Yeah. So, you know, I'm a mechanical engineer.
I got my bachelor's and master's in mechanical engineering.

I worked at NASA for a decade working on the Curiosity rover. Wait, the thing that went to Mars? Yeah.
Wait, what did you do with that?

I was, I worked on the jetpack that lowers it to the ground and then some hardware on the top deck of the rover.

So the arm digs in the dirt, dumps it into the belly of the rover and my hardware like accepted the sample. That's so cool.
And it's still working to this day. So fingers crossed.
Wow. Okay.

So you worked at NASA doing all kinds of cool stuff. Yeah.
And then I worked at Apple for five years in their special projects group. So and then eventually when I said like top secret stuff? Yeah.

I worked on the

what the hell. I worked on the Apple car.

You did? Yeah. Which didn't end up becoming a thing.
I was going to say, is there an Apple car?

Okay. They canceled it soon after I left.
Okay. Well, it's because you left.
Yeah, I like to think so.

And so then, and only then, when I had 10 million YouTube subscribers at that point, did I quit my actual job to do YouTube full-time? Okay, so hold on.

How did you and why did you start making videos on YouTube? Because you got big jobs at NASA and Apple. Yeah.
And how old are you when you when you kind of started tinkering, I'll say?

Like my first video I uploaded, I was like 31 years old. Okay.
And it was a Halloween costume.

it was like an ipad in front and an ipad in back if you do a face-to-face video call it looks like you have a hole in your body because the camera in front shows what's on the back so it's like an optical illusion oh so you have a so you have the camera in the back calling you have the camera in the front calling the camera in the back and vice versa

so then so what happens if you wave your hand in the front it shows that on the screen in the back so if you cut a hole in your shirt it looks like you have like a hole in your body right oh my god so both ways both ways so it was a very and this I love ideas that are really simple and that you could just make with stuff you already have.

Right. And so I uploaded that YouTube video because I took it to a Halloween party and everyone's like, this is amazing.
And it went super viral, like out of the gate, like 3 million views.

And I was like, well, this is a good feeling. Like, I like, I have way more ideas.
And back then, you didn't know you could make money or get famous on YouTube.

It was just like, you're just sharing ideas. Got it.
And basically, I've uploaded one video a month since that that day. So almost 15 years now.
So for 15 years, one video a month since that day.

And the videos are all explaining super cool things mostly about science. Generally, it's like, you know, it might be like, you know, someone stole a package for my porch.

So I made, I engineered a glitter bomb.

that, you know, could get revenge on porch pirates where it has four phones inside that record and upload to the cloud, but there's also a cup that spins a pound of the world's finest glitter.

Of course, there's some fart spray in there, so they have to get it rid of it out of their house. We built eventually like 20 and put them on porches all across America.
Okay.

In spots we knew were hot spots for getting porch pirates. Okay.
And yeah, and then we just tracked them all and we would know when one got stolen.

And then it's everyone's watching the footage real time. And you get some pretty hilarious reactions.
Wow.

So you have 71 million subscribers on YouTube.

Why do you think these experiments that you elaborately orchestrate, why do you think they connect so deeply, not just with kids, but with people of all ages and backgrounds around the world?

You just have to evoke a visceral response. In other words, it has to make them laugh.
They have to, you know, feel excited. They just have to feel something.

Right. For something to be remarkable, it has to be, you have to be able to be remarked about.

And so you don't finish, you don't share a video, you you don't finish watching. So if you could just make them feel something,

then they are way more likely to actually take action and share it. And I think this is applicable in people's lives.
If you want, you know, a lot of times we just want to focus on the facts.

Like, well, the facts are on my side. So I'm just going to state the facts.

But if you don't emotionally connect with someone, Maybe you want to pitch something to your boss, like this big idea, right?

Maybe you

want to apologize to your partner or your kid. Like if you, if the emotion's not there, it doesn't cause that shift in the heart.
And we survived long before written to tell stories to each other.

And so it's in our DNA to resonate with stories. And like, and I think this is very applicable for people's lives of just like leaning into the story and the emotion of a thing.

just for interpersonal relationships, like your apologies will be accepted faster and more earnestly. You will find that you can, you know, pitch, pitch ideas to coworkers.

Even just like, where are we going to eat, right? You are more influential if you can remember that we are hardwired to tell stories.

So if you don't think you're a good storyteller or you're like a really shy person,

is there any advice that you have about how you can use this framework of thinking about the emotion? Or I love that thing that you said, to be remarkable. you have to have people remark about you.

Yeah. And telling somebody a story or moving them emotionally or getting them excited about something is what makes people remark about you.

So, how could somebody think about storytelling as a tool to use to prepare for anything, whether it's a date or it's a job interview or it's having a hard conversation or it's trying to go viral making your next video?

The biggest downside, especially as an engineer, I get this, is like, is to focus on the facts. Let's say you're selling a thing.
It's like, well, you know, my processor has 20% more gigahertz.

People don't care. It's just a spec sheet, right? Yep.
They want to know how this will make them feel.

So I think part of it is like empathizing with the other person you're talking to and putting yourself in their shoes and understanding from their perspective, what would feel meaningful to them.

You only do one video a month.

When you are sitting down to think of the idea, Are there particular like checkboxes that you go through? Because one of them has to be, what emotion are we evoking? What story are we telling?

Like, is there a framework you use that helps you architect the type of experiment that you're going to do or how you're using kind of this? How do I evoke something?

How do I engineer a story that creates emotion for people?

What I do is I like to say, like, hide the vegetables.

What does that mean? Oh, you mean, like, blend them? What are you talking about? No, no, no, no, yes, I'll say.

So, well, at the end of the day, my goal is to reach as many brains as possible with the story of like learning how to think critically, to be curious, to embrace failure, thinking like an engineer, even if you're not an engineer, right?

Like that is my North Star. So the way I do that is hiding the vegetables.
So I might have a video that's like a 15-ton jello pool, which is very hard to do, by the way. 15-ton jello pool?

That's right. Is that like a swimming pool full of jello? Yes, that weighs 15 tons.

Which is, which no one has literally ever in the history of the internet actually pulled that off.

Like we were the first because we had to go to like, you know, because jello, you have to boil it and then you have to cool it down. Yes.

So we, I, I went to the perfect spot in the United States where overnight it would get to refrigerator temperatures. We boiled it in like six huge, you know, 55 gallon drums.
It took a full week.

I lost 10 pounds because I was so stressed out, but we pulled it off and you could see someone belly flopping in a pool of jello. That's a very clickbait title and thumbnail.
Okay.

But once you click on the video, Mel, this is where I get you because pretty soon you're learning about chemistry. You're learning about the scientific method.

you're learning about like the variables we controlled right so it's like i can't teach you if i don't have your attention

so by by teaching science in this way via spectacle you come in you get hooked you're like wait what and so that's what i really do is like you know i get your attention i hide the vegetables and this is actually something um

i have not really talked about this publicly mel but can i give you a big bombshell here a a big announcement here?

We're taking all the tricks I've learned over this 15 years of hiding the vegetables, of teaching science in a way that's exciting.

Kids and adults are choosing to watch these. We're in this on the YouTube.
There's so many other options they can click on.

So we're going to make a full science curriculum.

You are? Third to eighth grade. This includes really cool videos, includes a lot of their favorite YouTubers that they already watched.
Oh my gosh.

It includes resources for teachers that it includes really cool demos they can do in class that are very inexpensive. It also adheres to all the science standards.

And then we're going to make it free for all teachers. Are you kidding me? No, it's going to toss like three, it'll take about three years total.
We're about a year into it.

And

yeah, I just feel like teachers specifically, it's like, it's like such a, it's the most, I think, important profession and perhaps the most like

underappreciated or undersupported profession. So, especially these teachers who are like paying their own money for curriculum, it's like terrible.

So, it's kind of like, hey, reinforcements are on the way. We got you.
We're coming with this really cool thing. So, that I think will be like the most important thing I do like my whole life.

I'm really excited about it. I can see how emotional it makes you.

Yeah, I'm really, really excited about that. Why does this bring up so much for you?

You know, I myself am a product of great teachers. My mom,

she

like passed away like six months before I even made my first YouTube video.

And she didn't even go to like, she barely graduated high school, but like she has had

She's had more impact on my life than anyone by a very comfortable margin, which honestly, I almost think is a beautiful thing where you like never really know the the full measure of your life, like the impact that you have,

regardless of what you believe about what happens when we die, right? I think we can all agree a successful life is one where you leave the world a better place than you found it. Right.

And the impact you have on others, you'll just never really know. And I almost think it's beautiful that she had no idea that like.

what happened just right after she passed away where I started getting all this reach. And now like I'm trying to reach as many brains as possible.

And basically what she did for me and what other great teachers did for me, like that's what teachers are. They're seed planners.
So if we want to invest in the future of

the world, there's big problems coming down the pipeline, Mel. This is an all brains on deck situation.
Right. It is.
So we should be investing in the seed planners.

those who are creating the next generation of big problem solvers.

And so just this idea of like supporting and celebrating them and just like saying thank you and also just putting a thumb on the scale that's like, this is a cool profession and people should aspire to be this.

Like my dream job truly, and I've said this for a decade, is to be like

a middle school or high school science teacher. Like honestly, I thought by now I would be retired and I would just be doing that as a volunteer.

And then what I realized is like, by the way, I still want to do that.

Like that is still going to be what I do eventually, but I can have more impact using the platform that I have by supporting other teachers in the meantime.

Well, you know, I'm so moved.

I didn't think I'd cry talking to you, honestly.

I kept thinking, you would be my dream science teacher for my kids. I mean, and I'm sure as you're listening or watching this, you're like, man, I wish, I wish I, Mark, was my kids' teacher.

And what occurred to me is that your mom is clearly with us

and that

you actually are the world's science teacher.

That is what you're doing.

You just happen to have the largest science classroom in the world.

No, really.

That's what you're doing. Yeah.

I mean, I guess like it's funny because I don't think about it in those terms. Like, I'm just like, what's the next video I want to make next month? That's exciting to me.
And I think that is,

yeah,

I kind of think like when people are like, what's your 10-year plan? Especially when they ask kids in middle school or something, it's like, I don't know. Like nobody knows.
Like

any adult who tells you like, oh, yeah, I knew I'd be exactly right here in my life 20 years ago, bull. Like, that's not true.

Like my philosophy is like, it's like crossing a river. And there's some, a bunch of stones on it, right?

You don't necessarily know the right path, but what I can do is I could, I could wiggle the three rocks in front of me. And it's like, oh, this is the best rock right here.

So I'm going to hop on this one. And now that I'm on that one, now I could touch my toe out and wiggle the next three.
Yeah. So my whole thing, and I really try this to tell this kids as well.

It's like,

whatever the options are in front of me, okay, I'm going to pick the best one. I'm just going to put everything into this thing.
And then once you do that, now suddenly, guess what?

Like four more doors open. And now choose the best one from there.
Right. And now, oh, now there's seven more doors.
And so like, if you're 15, you don't know what you want to be when you grow up.

What, what makes you excited? Do you love to draw, right? Just draw a ton and get as good as you can be, right? Do you love to write? Well, then just write as much as you can, right?

Talk to other folks, learn more about that. And I just like a life where you just follow your passions is one that just very naturally just feels very, very fulfilling.

And so when you say, you, hey, you're in a position, you're the world science teacher. It's like, I don't know, I guess.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not looking at that, Mel.

I'm looking at the rock in front of me. Yes.
And then, yeah, sometimes you zoom out and you're like, oh, holy crud, like 71 million subscribers, like, and like 20 billion views on science videos.

Yeah, that's, that is a lot.

But it's like, I mean, my team will tell you, like, we'll release the video and they're like, oh, the video is great. I'm like, wait, what? I'm already on the next thing.

Like, no, we got more work to do. I want to pause on this because I think you actually just shared a story that has the absolute secret to success in it.

And that is that if you focus on something that is truly tied to something you deeply care about,

and you are also focused on the impact that it can have on somebody else, right? And so you talked about evoking emotion and setting up a story. We're all like, oh, world's biggest cello thing.

This is cool. But you're hiding the vegetables in it.
So you've become a master at the craft of teaching science, but you have never lost focus on the one lesson in front of you,

the one rock, as you say.

And that's the secret, because the second you pick your head up and go, 2 billion views and this, that, and the other thing, you're now no longer looking at the actual thing that you loved doing.

Yeah. You're looking at the wrong data.
Yeah. Now, here's what we need to do.
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Hey, it's your friend Mel. And I just wanted to say thank you.
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One episode at a time, you and I are learning, we're feeling better, we're doing better, And that's how you and I together have become a global force for good, creating positive change. Thank you.

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Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins.

And today you and I are learning simple tools and frameworks that will change the way you live, make decisions, be happier from the incredible Mark Rober, the most popular science creator and educator in the world.

Let's talk about failure. Yeah.
Because you've built your career on experiments.

And at the very beginning, you said that there is a framework that you could teach us about failing and getting excited about failing.

And I got to be honest with you, I'm not excited about failing, Mark.

Yeah.

So I think what I found over time is like, you know, this started the first time I noticed this, it was trying to make a dartboard where you get a bullseye every time, where you could throw a dart.

It would track the dart through the air. It would predict where it would land and then it would move the dartboard in 400 milliseconds.
No way. That's less than a blink of an eye.
Wow.

And that video took me three years to build that. And there were a lot of setbacks, Mel.
There was a lot of moments where it's like, oh, we thought this would work, but it doesn't.

And what I realized is like, at no part in any of that was I like, I'm a failure. This is the worst.
I want to give up. It's almost like with each setback, I was more and more determined.

I learned one more way not to do it. And what I realize is it's like a video game.
Okay. I call this the Super Mario effect.
Okay. In any video game, there's an objective or a goal.

Like you have to rescue the princess from the castle or get a certain amount of points, but there's obstacles in that way. Okay.
There might be pits. there might be bad guys.

And if you die, you go back to the beginning and you just keep trying. And over time, you get better and better and you learn to avoid the obstacles better and better.

You know, Super Mario Brothers, you're just trying to pass the level. And on that level, there's pits that you could fall into.

There's sliding green turtle shells. There's lots of ways that you could die.

But no one ever picks up that. controller for the first time and falls into a pit and is like, I'm such a failure.
Like, I'm an idiot. How embarrassing.
I'd never want to play this again. No.

Instead, you're like, oh, crud. Okay.
There's a pit there. I got to remember that.
Next time I'm going to come a little faster. I'm going to jump a little earlier.
Right.

And so by having this attitude toward failure, by focusing on rescuing the princess from the castle, the focus is on the princess and the goal in mind. You focus on the win, right? You're focused.

You're not focused on the failures. And that doesn't mean it doesn't sting, right?

On level eight, one, there's this huge pit you have to jump over and land on this tiny little platform it's really hard to do and you've made it all the way there and then you die and it stings mel it still hurts it's not this pollyan attitude of like oh well everything's good well even the sound at the end when you die

oh

right it's very sad even the sound but it stings you're immediately like what did i learn Now I'm going to try this again because I now know one more way not to attempt that jump.

You know, in case you're not the kind of person that has ever played video games in your life, let me try to just explain why this is so relevant to life.

When Mark talks about a level in a video game, this is basically a psychological gym that you're entering. So you start the game and you're entering a challenge.
You're going to fail.

And then you figure something out. And then you try again.
And then you fail again and again and again. If you keep going, you eventually beat the level.

And what's cool about the metaphor of a video game is that's resilience. That's what we need in life.
Life is one big level, and it's going to have setbacks, trial and error.

You're going to get stuck. There's going to be obstacles in your way.
You're going to have unexpected enemies.

And you either are going to get to a point where you're so frustrated you quit and throw your hands in the air or you keep playing.

How

do you use this

when a lot of the failing that people need to do is in front of other people?

Or you might get negative feedback or people might comment on your video or you might look stupid at work. Do you see what I'm saying?

So, like, how, what would you say to the person that's like, okay, I can do that with a video game, but I still can't talk at work? I think we

overestimate the negative impact on failure and underestimate our ability to handle it when we're imagining towards the future of this failure thing. And I think it's a repetition thing.

Like, I get that. I hate public speaking, and it's a goal of mine right now.
It's one of my Super Mario level things I'm working on.

And what I'm finding is just the more reps I do it, the more times I do it, you do normalize to it. Yeah.

So I think like, I get that fear, and I recognize that it is different when you're in front of other people.

But it's one of those things that just like you just, it's exposure therapy and fail small in front of small groups of people. And then you can eventually fail bigger and bigger.

But even still, like, I will say this framework really does help. You know, I'll have videos that will bomb and there'll be a 10 out of my last 10.
Like,

and it stings. It's like falling in that pit, but it's like, oh, you know what, though? This kind of makes sense because we started a little differently and we did it this way.

And so immediately, just the way my brain works, and that's a big failure mel in front of a lot of people. Yeah.

And it stinks for a day, but immediately the way the framework works is I'm like, what did I, what did I learn from that?

And I call that thinking like an engineer, meaning like, you know, to get the rover on Mars, we tested so many things because you just don't know.

And no one, if you, if, if you have a test that fails at NASA for a landing strut, no one's like, oh, you're a failure. It's like, oh, great.
Now we know the limits of what this thing can do.

So let's redesign it, right? As an engineer, this is just how you think. Like, if you are not failing, that's a problem.
Yeah. Right.
Like you need to be testing the limits to understand.

Like, if you're being so concerned on everything, you have no idea how much bigger and cooler this thing could be, right? Each time you fail, you are learning something.

You're learning one more way not to do it. So, I think if they can approach it that way and find the positivity in the fail and the learning in the fail, then it gives it a purpose.

You just gave me a huge aha moment as a mom. Yeah.
And I want,

as you're listening or watching, I want you to steal this. I want you to use this with every single gamer in your life.

Because I think one of the things that I got very wrong is you tend to attack the gaming

because you think

the

person in your life who's good at gaming or loves gaming is avoiding life by gaming.

And I just realized I missed a huge opportunity as a parent.

because Oakley was only gaming as much as he was because he was good at it. And he was doing it because he was doing it with his friends.

And he was doing it because he was learning these incredible skills that you're talking about.

Thinking like an engineer, tinkering, experimenting, failing, starting over, the resilience, the get back and go, the building that muscle over and over and over and over again.

It's evidence that they have resilience. It's evidence that they can experiment and fail and learn.
It's evidence that they can figure it out. Trying it and then learning.
Yes.

And by the way, you shouldn't just nail it right out of the gate. Like, I think that's what people expect, right? Well, if I'm good at it, you don't expect that in a video game.

Why would you expect that in life? Like you learn a lot more in failure sometimes, especially with kids than just by succeeding at a thing.

You know, one of the things that I would love to have you speak to for the person who's listening or watching who's scared to try something new.

Because they don't want to mess up. They don't want to look cringy.

You know, they're worried about what their friends are going to think.

Like, what is your message to somebody who's like on that precipice, knowing they want to grow and change, but are actively talking themselves out. I would say start small and make your goal to fail.

What do you mean, make your goal to fail?

I just, I just went through this myself, Mel, where it's like I have, I like to play chess occasionally and I found like I wasn't playing chess because I felt like if I lost, somehow I would internalize it, something about me.

This is like playing online. And I'm like, what am I doing? So I made a goal that I want to lose 10 games.
What? I love this. This was my goal.
Do you know I'm starting to learn chess?

And I feel really stupid. And so I played once with Oakley.
He smashed me. And then I'm like, okay, like, I don't want to play with anybody else because I don't want to look dumb.

So it's your goal to lose 10 times in a row. 10 times or just 10 times.
Like in a, like that's, it doesn't necessarily need to be in a row, but it's like, hey, I'm going to play these games.

And like, I check a box. I win.
when I fail this many times. And that just resets everything.
Right. And it totally worked for me because now I exposed myself to losing more.

And now I don't even think about it. And I love, I don't internalize it as a negative thing.
And now I'm enjoying and playing way more chess.

So like if you're nervous about speaking up at work, you know, if you're, maybe it's public speaking, maybe dating an interview, a creative.

Dating an interview, maybe you love to draw and you want to make a YouTube video talking about it. Just make your goal.
Let's say for the YouTube case. just to make 10 videos.

Don't think anything about views. Don't think anything about any sort of metrics.
Go for zero views. Yeah, go for zero views, right? Like your W is just getting it up and starting to flex that muscle.

And it's just like anything in life. It's exposure therapy.
And the more you're exposed to it, the better you get. You build those muscles, right? It's just like training in a gym.

Those muscles get stronger. You get more adapted to it.
And then you look back at where you were a year ago and you're like, oh man, I can't believe I was ever worried about this.

Well, here's what's genius about that, Mark, is that I think there's a lot of talk about how failure should be the thing we go for.

But what you just did with that framework is you said, no, the goal is to fail. Yeah.
I love that frame. It's so subtle, but it's a really genius way to do it.
Just get the pressure off yourself.

Right. And understand that will happen and don't try and avoid that thing.
I love this. Mark.
You are so amazing.

And I just could talk to you for days, but I got to take a quick pause so I can give our amazing sponsors a chance to share a few words.

And I also want to give you a chance to share this episode and conversation with people that you care about, because I bet you're just like me.

As you're listening to Mark, you're thinking about people in your life that would love this. And coming up, Mark is going to unpack his framework for happiness.
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Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins, and today you and I are learning simple frameworks that will change the way you think and live.
I love this. I bet you're loving it.

From the incredible Mark Rober, the number one science creator and educator in the world.

So, Mark, one of the things that is just your genius is that you make science and learning and failing so fun and humor and silliness is kind of part of the formula.

I know that you brought something to show. Oh, yeah.
So, here's an example of just a very simple demo. I'll pull up that's down there.
Okay. So, he's reaching down right now.

If you're not watching on YouTube, but you're probably going to want to watch this on YouTube at some point. You've got a, oh, you got a hair dryer.

Yes, this is a simple hair dryer you'd have at home and just

ping pong ball yeah okay so what i'm gonna do mel

i'm gonna turn this on

and

the ping pong ball is levitating in this hair dryer

but even as you twist it left and right

it like

magically stays in the airflow right

so this is a principle called the Kawanda effect. Essentially what's happening is it's creating like a little low pressure bubble

for the ball to float in. That's why even at a side angle like this, it's still floating.
This is what the principle behind what makes curve balls curve in baseball.

It's like the same kind of principle of like air flowing around the side to create little bubbles. Oh, because the air is coming straight up and out of the hair dryer.

But when it hits the mass of the ball, it goes up on the sides of it. So it's almost like cupping it with the fluid that is air.
I'm learning. It's exactly it, man.
Wow. You explained that so well.

But what's so great, like, that's like such a simple demo of like Harry Potter levitation, right? I mean, you literally look,

you know, like a wizard just like hovering this thing.

And it's just, this is junk you have lying around your house. So it's like a demo that explains it.
That's really cool. That's very approachable, right?

This is, this isn't some fancy scientific instrument. It's a ping-pong ball and air drum.
Here's another one that I think will work well on a podcast. Okay.

I've got a cup. You've got like a little like plastic cup like you see in backyard barbecue.
Yeah, like those red solo cups.

There's just a normal string here. Yeah, just a white string that you've tied to the, you've, you've punched a hole at the end.
So it's poked through the end of the bottom of the cup.

And then I have a little bit of a, if I'm going to dip this in my water here. Okay.
It's just a paper towel. Yep, nothing fancy.

And what's interesting now is I'm going to try and make a chicken sound.

You tell me if this is a chicken sound with a plastic cup and a string and a wet paper towel see if you believe it ready here we go

that's exactly what that sounds like

so all we're doing with this little cup and making a little chicken demo is there's vibrations as the friction on the string rubs against the paper towel it vibrates the bottom of this cup it's a diaphragm it's like a drum and then it's amplified through the cup so it becomes like a little speaker in other words if i take this same string and I rub it without the cup, what you would expect to hear, what I anticipate happening,

you just don't hear much. You kind of hear it, but it doesn't have that amplification.
Because what's happening with the bottom of this cup is as I vibrate it,

it pushes all the air molecules that are up against the bottom of this cup. It pushes them out and they bonk into other air molecules and they keep bonking until it hits your eardrum.

And it just, it registers those movements of molecules bumping in your eardrum. And we call that sound.
And if it's a high frequency, that means the bumping happens more frequently.

So, you know, if it's a high frequency, a high pitch, that's just like the bumping happening faster. Faster.
If it's a low frequency, the bumping is happening less frequently.

We call that a low frequency. So does this also explain why.

if you my kid my kid oakley showed me this you if you need a speaker and you don't have one you can stick your phone in a cup and play it in a cup and then the cup amplifies it. That's exactly it.

That's right. Whoa.
It just, it's, it concentrates the, the air molecules all pushing together in the same direction to eventually hit your ear.

So just simple little demos like that, where it's like, you know, I could have tried to explain that with words, but if you can viscerally, you know, get your hands on it and it's not a complicated thing, like it's not a complicated set.

Like those are the double, those are the moments where I I think you create more aha moments. I love that.

So how would you recommend that the person who's listening or watching right now apply the fun and the curiosity toward their own goals in life? Curiosity is actually

and like creativity and curiosity are like, that's a muscle that can be developed. I do think some people are just born more naturally curious

and probably born a little bit more naturally creative, but there's a huge middle ground. The research shows this.
We've worked a lot with Dr. Adam Green from Georgetown.

And you can actually measure,

you know, your brain using the out, if you measure the alpha brain waves, that's highly correlated to creative problem solving, creative thinking. So you can measure this with an EKG.

And what he found is that it's a muscle. Creativity is a muscle.
Yes. The more time you spend in that space,

the more comfortable you are with it, the more quickly your brain goes to that spot. Huh.
So it's kind of like this idea of like a mind frame of just like

viewing the world through a lens of curiosity, viewing the world through a lens of like, huh, why is that? Right. Like the most, the best words to hear in science aren't like, Eureka, I discovered it.

Like the best words that lead to the most scientific breakthrough is like, huh, I wonder why that happened. Like it starts with an observation.
You're like, that was unexpected.

When we first sat down, you talked about frameworks for understanding yourself and what you value and for really

being happier, authentically happier.

What have you learned about happiness?

So in engineering, we call it first principles approach. Like if you're trying to go to Mars, start from a very first principle.
What are the basic fundamentals that you need to know?

How much energy do you need to get there? Like, what are just basic building blocks? And I think for happiness, there's some basic building blocks that

intuitively I've really tried to maintain as life has gotten crazier. And that comes down to like relationships and like living according to what my personal values are.

Right.

Being value driven and like having a goal of what is my impact in this world and what is the reason I'm here.

So like being motivated intrinsically by like those types of things and not letting all this other

stuff be a distraction. I think a lot of people have to buy their fancy things to realize, like, oh, that wasn't what actually brings happiness.
And I have this, you know, Mr.

Beast is a buddy of mine. He's another YouTuber, and him and I have this debate a lot.
His thing is like, oh, you can either be really successful or you can be happy. Right.

Like, you can't, you can't be both. And there's many decisions I've made that sort of

would have helped me have more reach or would have meant that I could have more money or have more whatever.

But I don't want to just have this flash in the pan and go really hard and just totally burn out. If you do that, then you spike back down to nothing.

But if you just sort of build one step at a time, happiness is found by just like incremental level ups, just little hits of dopamine, right? Of Of just like, oh, I got a little bit better.

Oh, I got a little bit better. And I think in life, like, I've really tried to like,

you know, we could have 500 employees and have all this venture capital and do all this stuff. But like, I've pushed against all that.

And I'm just like, I just, if I want to reach as many brains as possible, the right way to do it is just, we're just little by little, we're going to creep up to this thing.

And as a result, like, I've never gotten burnt out on YouTube. And I would say, like, I'm more stoked now than I have been in 15 years.

I think the way that I would relate to it is there were periods in my life, especially when we were struggling financially,

where

I

thought the secret to happiness was going to be a different car or a nicer handbag or the ability to go on a nicer vacation with my kids.

You might be, as you're listening or watching, in this moment in your life where you're so focused on chasing the weight on the scale or the figure in the bank account or the house in a certain neighborhood because you think that solves all your problems.

And I actually thought it would.

I think the good news is like, if you, this is something that resonates and you struggle with, there is a very good solution for it.

And the anecdote to this feeling of like needing and chasing that dopamine, getting the next thing is gratitude.

So, you know, this is why sometimes you hear like having a gratitude journal or like before you go to bed each night, like literally writing down three things that happened that day that you were grateful for.

Because at any, at any one time, incredible amounts of both abundance and scarcity exist in our world. It just depends on which one you want to focus on, right?

You know, and so. I when I find myself in this thing and feeling down that, like, I should be doing better.
I should be having more.

The reset is like, man, look at what i have in my life and almost a hack for this if you're still struggling to be grateful

imagine take something away say like a partner or someone that means a lot to you how would you feel and like that is a good reset of like

why am i worrying about what I'm going to bring to the potluck on Friday and stressing over this in my life. That is such a small problem compared to what it could be.
Right.

And I think it's a reset then of like

when you come home. And at the end of the day, I think relationships do matter.
And I think the research bears this out, right?

Happiness is correlated to like the quality of the relationships in your life.

And for me, I find that to be as true as well. So then it's like, well, then I shouldn't be on my phone when I come home.

And if at work, I'm in this hyper optimization mode and I get stuff done and I have people around me that when you get home, you need to flip that and you need to not be efficient with your kids.

Like the phone goes down and your goal should be flipped. I need to be as inefficient as possible, right? I'm going to read this book four times.
I'm not going to skip the pages.

I'm going to sit here and play this thing with them. Your goal when you get home should be as inefficient as you possibly can.

And like that will yield the best results for fostering a child that feels like, you know, they're being raised in this loving environment, especially with all the distractions we have today.

I think that's the best parenting advice I've heard in a very very long time. No, I mean it.
Because

part of why we're so stressed out, I'll just speak for myself, is we're optimizing for efficiency and productivity as parents. Yeah.

And we need to do the opposite because kids need your presence and your attention. They don't need to jam 50,000 things into the next 15 minutes.

Yeah, when they're telling that story that's very long-winded and they're going over and over and repeating like, I want to be like, yeah, yeah, get to the point. Like, what happened? Right.
Yes.

That's not the point. The end of the punchline of their story is not the point.
Your undivided attention and showing that they matter, that's the point.

I want to make sure that as you were listening or watching, that you did not miss the

rock solid piece of gold that Mark dropped in the middle of the story about gratitude.

Because if I think back to some of the hardest moments in my life, Those moments where you're like, life is unfair. I suck.
The world sucks. Everyone around me sucks.
I've really blown it.

And those moments happen to all of us. If I had had the negative

gratitude piece of advice that you just dropped on us, okay, even in the worst moment, think about removing somebody you love.

Even though I was a complete jerk and constantly angry at Chris when we were almost a million dollars in debt,

there's not a second that I wished he was gone.

And so if you have something in your life that you don't want to lose, then you have something to be grateful for. And that helps you start where you are.

And it helps remind you of what you actually value. How

as an adult,

because adults get stuck. Yeah.

And

You can get really stuck in the story that you're telling yourself that whether it's a story, I don't know what I want, or it's too late for me, or I've screwed up so many times, I can't, I don't even know what direction to turn.

How do you use some of these principles, whether we're talking about the alpha brainwaves or we're talking about the kind of question prompts that naturally make your imagination go?

How would you recommend that somebody who does feel very stalled in life or feels stuck in life and doesn't feel creative and doesn't feel innovative and can't even imagine something bigger or better than where they're at right now.

How do you start to change that story? How do you lean into what might be possible? So, if someone's feeling stuck and not excited and not creative,

what is the one thing in your life, even if it's super small, that even gets you a little bit excited?

Maybe it's you love flowers and gardening, like, or you, I shouldn't say love, maybe you kind of like it and it's kind of even slightly interesting to you. Right.

Lean into that, going back to like crossing the river, but start small and then go from there, treating it as an opportunity to learn and to get better and to optimize.

If you ever played Zelda, if you ever played any game, if you've ever gone on to accomplish something great, just remember what that was like.

It started small and you most likely were excited about the process. So, what can you do to hide the vegetables for yourself? And then it's exciting because you feel like you're getting better.

Failure has purpose, right? You embrace the failure as the quickest way to get to something amazing.

The thing that I would also add is that in every one of your experiments and every one of your videos and everything that you've done, you did not hold open the possibility that you wouldn't eventually get there.

And so, there is

also this faith involved where you say, if I keep going, if I'm willing to learn, I am going to figure this out and this is going to work out for me. But I will say with a caveat,

that it may look different than I thought it would look.

Mark, what are your parting words?

I just, I feel, I feel grateful to be here sitting across the table from you, Mel, to have these values and these things that you care about to like share it with a bunch of people is like,

even if you're not sharing it with a bunch of people, just like to be able to move the needle in a way you think is beneficial for the world on any scale is incredible.

And to do it on this scale sitting across from you is like dream come true. Well, the feelings mutual.
I'm a huge fan. You're so much better in real life and you're pretty fantastic

in what you do. I just, on behalf of absolutely everybody who will listen to this, I want to thank you for the gift that you are to the world.
And you know what? I'm also so happy that you're here.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing this with the people that you care about.
Thank you for listening to something that is going to help you create a better life.

There is no doubt in my mind that everything that Mark taught us today is going to help you make changes, take risks, be more resilient, have a curious mindset. I just love this.

I cannot wait for my kids to listen to this. I can't wait to share this with people.

And one more thing I want to tell you, in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you as your friend that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life.

And I know that everything that Mark shared with us today is exactly what you need to do that. Alrighty, I will be waiting for you in the very next episode.

I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.

I want you to go like this because you have a little bit of water on your nose.

I'm rubber your glue. You're amazing mouth.
Thank you.

Data, yeah, data, data. I don't know.
I must say it in the stupider way: tomatoes, tomatoes. Here we go.
Is that good? Okay, great. I love this.
All right, we've got to bring him.

I've got to go to the bathroom. You are.

Oh my gosh.

I love you.

I'm just going to. I get the bathroom.
Yeah, yeah, great, great, great. I knew you were going to make me cry, Mel.
Damn it.

Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper.
This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you.

This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend.

I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good.

I'll see you in the next episode.

Serious Accent Podcasts.

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