If This Episode Doesn’t Motivate You, Nothing Will | Mel Robbins and Wallo

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Most people live in a 'cell around their brain'

  Wallo spent 20 years in prison, from 17 to 37. When he got out, he decided there were more people imprisoned outside than inside, because most people are 'walking around with a cell around their brain,' too afraid to do what they want. He took that as a reason to be confident: if fear is the main competition, the field is wide open.

• 02

  Real change started with a moment of truth in the mirror

  He says he wasn't enraged, he was hurt, 'because the truth hurt.' Looking in the mirror, he told himself he was doing all that time 'for being somebody you're not,' and promised that 'tomorrow is going to be better than yesterday.' Mel frames it as using the mirror not for vanity but to admit you're unhappy because you've been someone you're not.

• 03

  The wrong crowd costs you more than you think

  He got into crime because he 'wanted things that I wasn't willing to work for.' He argues culture glamorizes the bad guy ('America loves the successful criminal') and that we twist ourselves to be accepted by people who 'breathe like you, got 24 hours like you.' His family shows the cost: in 1998 he shared a cell with his stepfather, and in 2005 with his brother, in the same prison.

• 04

  'I'm not in prison, I'm in Princeton'

  His mindset inside: 'I'm not in jail, I'm in Yale. I'm not in the state pen, I'm in Penn State.' It wasn't the prison's job to educate him, so he did it himself. He flipped through TV channels studying commercials, wondering why a Big Mac never looked like the ad and why car ads cast different people on different channels. That's how he taught himself marketing.

• 05

  Who you say you are isn't proven until you act

  The scariest day of his sentence was the day they let him go. He had told his family he'd changed, but he was that person only 'of the mind,' not yet 'off of lived experience and action.' Temptation was waiting, and only daily behavior could prove the change.

• 06

  No one is coming to stop you, or to save you

  Coming home to a world with 'computers in our pockets,' he was stunned at how easy it was to open a bank account, register a business or get a trademark. 'Who's going to stop me?' Nobody is worrying about you, he says, so nobody but you is in your way. His one-line takeaway is 'Yes to you and no to them,' and his blunter version is that you are the one in your own way.

• 07

  Live inside the life you want before you have it

  Prison 'fortified' his imagination. Watching Anthony Bourdain travel, he pictured himself in those places. Mel links this to visualization: the brain starts to believe the life is possible. After his release he rehearsed the life deliberately (see examples).

• 08

  Strangers make you rich

  Stop worrying about whether high school or college friends support you, he says. Michael Jordan, Bon Jovi and Michael Jackson weren't made by the 20 or 100 people they knew. You have to be willing to be talked about. Change is uncomfortable, and people who are 'too comfortable with being comfortable' repeat the same mistakes a second and third time.

• 09

  Forgiveness 'helped me breathe'

  His brother Steve was shot and died in their grandmother Nanny's arms in the doorway of their childhood home while Wallo was locked up. He forgave the killer, not for the killer's sake but so he could celebrate his brother by living for him instead of holding on to anger. He never told the man directly. On the show he said, 'I forgive you, man.'