How to Live a Life of Purpose According to World-Renowned Psychic Medium | The Mel Robbins Podcast
- Guest
- Kim Russo
- Read time
- ~5 min
- Uploaded
- 5 Oct 2023
- Duration
- 1:21:44
- Views
- 1.5M
KEYPOINTS
- 01
Mel asks skeptics to suspend doubt for the episode, and admits she's one
Mel says she wants to believe in psychics but has 'a massively healthy dose of skepticism' and wonders whether readers simply Google people. What persuaded her was a detail she says couldn't be Googled (see examples). Throughout, the spiritual ideas are presented as Kim Russo's beliefs and experience, not as established science.
- 02
Russo says everyone is intuitive
Russo, an intuitive psychic medium with an A&E show and appearances on Oprah, dislikes the labels and calls herself a 'teacher of energy' who is science-minded. Her argument: wild animals use instinct to sense danger and find food, so why wouldn't humans have the same wisdom? She says schooling and parental conditioning teach us to suppress it, and that her work is about unlearning those blocks and letting go of control.
- 03
Resonance: when something rings true in your gut
Russo calls Mel's sense that the message was 'the truth' resonance with the soul's higher knowing, and says that's how we should live. Mel adds her own theory: animals run on instinct with no words to argue themselves out of it. Humans' language, what makes us 'intelligent', is also what buries intuition, because we use words to talk ourselves out of change when we're afraid.
- 04
Don't brush off nudges, even ones that defy logic
Russo's examples are an urge to skip your usual route to work or to cancel a pricey 60th-anniversary trip. She says such signals show up in the gut or as a pounding heart, and that 'you cannot put faith and logic in the same sentence'. Her line 'nothing changes if nothing changes' sums up her case for stepping out in faith. Fear and control, which she calls ego, are the main blocks.
- 05
There are different ways of receiving, and feelings count
Russo describes clairvoyance (seeing), clairaudience (hearing) and clairsentience (feeling), and says most people have one that's stronger. Clairsentience is walking into a beautiful room and sensing something is off, perhaps after an argument. She says many messages only make sense later. She also says people can be 'a medium in the moment', like suddenly telling a friend 'you're not going to be with this guy' without knowing why.
- 06
Her 'drive-thru' view of manifesting, and its limits
Russo compares asking the universe to ordering at a drive-thru: you expect exactly what you ordered, and doubtful thoughts cancel the order. She adds a limit: the universe won't give you something that takes from someone else, and she believes you may not be able to manifest a loved one's remission if their soul 'contracted' an exit point.
- 07
Soul contracts and the 'law of balance'
Russo believes souls make agreements before birth. Her example: a soul that misused power in a past life might come back to empower others. She avoids the word karma because it sounds negative and calls it the law of balance, which is why she's known as 'the happy medium'. On decisions like where to move, she says there's no right or wrong answer; ask what experience you want, because you have free will.
- 08
Lessons she says she's heard from people who have died
From what she describes as tens of thousands of readings: life on Earth is 'a blink' compared with eternity, so don't sweat the small stuff. We're reunited with loved ones afterward. Forgiveness matters, and much of what kept people stuck was 'bondage of your own thoughts', seen through 'two little slits' with no aerial view.
EXAMPLES
- 01
The Air Force pilot behind Mel
On Mel's daytime talk show (Russo was booked after another guest cancelled), Russo described a man in a decorated military uniform, then the letter K, then Ken, Mel's late father-in-law Kenneth Robbins. Mel said he was never a pilot. Chris confirmed from the control room that Ken had been in the Air Force Reserves and dreamed of flying but was colorblind, a fact Mel had never known.
- 02
'Trust your son'
Russo said Ken was upset about something at a school and that Mel had to trust her son. Privately, her son had been fighting to go to high school in Southern Vermont near his grandparents, and Mel had refused to move from Boston. Chris said 'I'm not going to argue with your dead father-in-law.' His mother had just offered to sell the house she and Ken built. They bought it, and three years later Mel says she's the happiest and most content she's ever been, and says the podcast wouldn't exist without that message.
- 03
Russo's childhood
After she was electrocuted on Christmas Eve by sticking a safety pin in a socket, which badly burned her arm, Russo says five unsmiling figures in Depression-era black stood at the foot of her bed every night. She slept with the covers over her head and kept her sister awake asking her to spell words like 'elephant'. She later read a book saying many mediums had high doses of electricity before age 10, and as a Catholic she worried the work went against her faith.
- 04
The teacher who wouldn't take no
Holly, a medium Russo met at a lecture, called a month later saying Russo was a medium. Russo, a skeptical New Yorker and stay-at-home mom of three boys, declined because the class was in the morning. A year later Holly offered evening classes. Russo went to 12 but never joined the practice readings. Then, she says, voices came while she blow-dried her hair ('Hi, my name is Lisa, I died in a car accident'). Holly told her 'you can't' stop them.
- 05
The barred owl on Mel's anniversary
Driving home in pouring rain on her 27th anniversary, Mel saw the car ahead hit a barred owl. She jumped out in heeled boots, stopped traffic, and says the owl turned its head and held eye contact for about 25 seconds. She wrapped it in a stranger's towel, held it for 30 minutes on the drive home, and a Woodstock, Vermont rescue says it will survive but likely can't be released. Russo links owls to wisdom and a new chapter.
OTHER RELEVANT
- 01
Russo's two practices for building intuition
First, meditation in any form: a phone-free walk on the beach, or her own hot bath alone with grateful thoughts. Second, open the heart through gratitude, compassion, volunteering, joy and forgiveness. To her, forgiveness means seeing that someone acted from an unhealthy 'program', not excusing what they did. If you don't know your purpose, she says, make helping someone your purpose.
- 02
A psychometry exercise to try with a friend
Give someone an object belonging to a person you know well, such as a grandmother's ring. Have them write down every color, feeling or image that comes to them without filtering, then compare it with what you know. Russo says children are especially good at this before they learn to doubt.
- 03
Empaths need boundaries
Russo warns that empaths without boundaries attract 'psychic vampires', including narcissists, and can feel anxious in crowds or on planes. She suggests imagining a protective bubble and speaking your truth. She also links people-pleasing to thyroid, voice or breathing problems; that's her spiritual view, not medical evidence.