Train Your Mind: Understanding Synchronicity Will Change Your Life | Mel Robbins Podcast

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Synchronicity is a 'holy crap' moment of meaningful timing

  Dr. Tom Myers, who wrote his PhD dissertation on synchronicity, describes it as the moment you step back and wonder how you could possibly be in this place at this time. Examples include meeting someone across the world who turns out to be your neighbor, or thinking of a friend just as they text. The idea goes back to Carl Jung, who Myers says wanted a physics framework before putting forward his theory. Myers stresses that his own focus is psychological, not physics.

• 02

  Three signs you're having one

  First, it's 'acausal', in Jung's term: it comes out of the blue and you didn't set it in motion. Texting a friend and getting a reply doesn't count. Thinking of them and then running into them at the grocery store does. Second, it's meaningful to you personally, even if to no one else. Third, the timing feels exactly right, like 'I needed this today.'

• 03

  A coincidence can be explained away; a synchronicity carries meaning

  Myers's example: a blue balloon drifts down onto him while he mows his lawn in the country. He decided it was probably from a birthday party down the road, so it was a coincidence. Mel's twist: if your late father loved blue balloons and it happened on his birthday, the same event becomes a sign. What makes the difference is the emotion and wonder it brings up.

• 04

  Common signs include numbers, hearts, lyrics and animals

  Myers lists signs with emotional pull: seeing 11:11 or repeated threes, a heart in the clouds when you feel low, an article turning up just as you search for it, or a song lyric that shifts your mood. Animals count when meaning is attached, like a mother who said she'd return as a butterfly. Mel thinks of a red-tailed hawk over her Vermont property as Chris's dad or her grandmother.

• 05

  The idea rests on a belief that people are connected

  Myers argues all people and matter are connected, and that we pick up 'vibrations' from one another. Mel's everyday version is feeling a grumpy stranger's mood hit you in a coffee line. Mel goes further, citing the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics for quantum entanglement research and suggesting thoughts may influence people far away. That leap is her interpretation and the guest's framework, not something the physics research itself claims.

• 06

  The benefit is confirmation and confidence

  Myers says synchronicities confirm your value and tell you you're on the right path. People in his research kept saying 'it just feels right', which he ties to trusting your gut. Mel says believing in it, whether as faith, energy, alignment or physics, makes her more confident.

• 07

  For skeptics, think of it as alignment

  Mel suggests people who don't believe in a higher power think about times life flowed versus times everything felt like friction. Wrong people, the wrong relationship or the wrong job create resistance. When your inside matches your outside, things click, and she thinks that's what synchronicity feels like.

• 08

  Step one: supercharge your attention on what you want

  If you don't know what you want, Mel suggests writing down five dreams, big or small, every day as part of your morning or evening routine. Put your attention on what you want instead of complaining about what you don't have.

• 09

  Step two: open up to the early coincidences and feel them

  Drop the cynical filter that says 'my phone is listening and serving me ads' or 'they only want something.' Myers says synchronicities often come in clusters of three, four or five linked events. Once you start seeing them, they seem to show up everywhere.

• 10

  Step three: call out the sign and walk toward it

  Mel says signs get 'bigger and brighter and louder' when you name them and give thanks. Grab one small sign as a toehold and act on it. She ties this to the reticular activating system, the brain's attention filter: deliberately looking for something trains your brain to notice more of it.