Episode Transcript
Hey everyone, and welcome to Simple Wins, I’m your host Adam OLeary.
Like a lot of you, I imagine, I spend a lot of my time consuming content. Podcasts, videos, articles—it’s part of the job, but it can also become noise. Every once in a while, though, you stumble onto something that doesn’t feel like noise. It feels like a quiet, firm hand on your shoulder, turning you around and saying, “Hey. Check in.”
That’s what happened to me when I watched a video from Mel Robbins. Now, if you don’t know Mel, she’s a best-selling author and a podcaster who has this incredible gift for cutting through the nonsense and speaking to you like a straight-talking, compassionate friend. This particular episode was just her, talking directly to the camera, and she proposed a simple exercise: answering five powerful questions.
And I did it. I paused the video after each question and I actually answered them. And I have to tell you, the clarity I gained was… well, it was a little embarrassing, because the answers were so obvious once I finally gave them airtime in my own head.
So today, I want to walk you through these five questions. I’m going to share what Mel said about why they’re so important—and I’ll be quoting her directly from the transcript so you know this is coming straight from her—and I’m going to share a bit about what I learned when I asked them to myself. My hope is that by the end of this, you’ll feel inspired to hit pause on your day and answer them for yourself.
Alright, let’s get into it.
**Question Number One: How are you *really* doing right now?**
This is the first question Mel asks, and she’s very specific about it. She says, and I’m quoting her here:
> “Before you blurt out the automatic, ‘Oh, I'm fine.’ Mel, just stop. Close your mouth. Take in a breath through your nose and just sit in silence with that question for a second. How are you really doing right now? I'll wait.”
>
I love that. “I’ll wait.” Because she knows our first answer is almost always a lie. It’s the social lubricant, the “I’m fine” we offer to the cashier, the coworker, even to ourselves when we’re rushing out the door.
But Mel pushes past that. She says you have to ask it a couple of times because there are layers. She encourages you to just name it, without judgment. Are you overwhelmed? Content? Anxious? Excited? She says, and this is key: **“You don't have to fix it. You don't have to do anything. Just answer the question. Acknowledge it. Tell yourself the truth.”**
The reason this is so powerful, according to Mel, is twofold. First, the common-sense reason: if you don’t slow down and check in, you’ll always be running on autopilot, stressed and disconnected from yourself.
But she also cites a clinical psychologist, Dr. Lisa Damour, who wrote in the New York Times that **“most problems feel better when they're on the outside rather than on the inside.”** Mel expands on this, saying, **“Having a problem or feeling overwhelmed isn't nearly so bad as feeling utterly alone with the feeling or the problem that you're dealing with.”**
When I asked myself this, my first answer was, “Busy. I’m busy.” But that’s not a feeling, that’s a state of being. When I dug deeper, the word that came up was “cluttered.” My mind feels cluttered. Not necessarily anxious or sad, but like a browser with too many tabs open, each one playing a different video. Just naming that—“I feel cluttered”—immediately made it feel less overwhelming. It was no longer a vague, swirling storm in my head; it was a specific, identifiable condition. And conditions can be managed.
**Question Number Two: Who is someone that you've spent time with lately, or you wish you had?**
This one hit me hard. Mel frames this around the idea that we often prioritize work or daily tasks over our relationships, and it has a direct cost. She says, **“Your life and the quality of the life that you live is largely driven by the quality of your relationships.”**
She tells this wonderfully embarrassing and relatable story about her brother. She’s lived in Vermont for four years, and her brother, who lives in Chicago, had never been to visit. They’d see each other at family gatherings elsewhere, but he’d never been to her home. She realized she had this sense that she was seeing him a lot because she works with his wife every day, but she was missing that direct connection with *him*.
So, they made a plan. He drove 15 hours with his family—and this is the best part—so that their two Australian Shepherd dogs, who are brothers from the same litter, could be reunited. She describes this incredibly sweet moment where the two dog brothers, after not seeing each other for years, went straight to each other and were inseparable for the entire visit.
The takeaway Mel emphasizes is **“connection over having to do some big grand thing.”** They didn’t go on an expensive vacation; they just hung out at her house. She says this has been a focus for her: **“prioritizing time with people in my family and with friends that I really want to see.”**
And she backs this up with some serious science, referencing Dr. Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Mel states plainly what that 84-year study found: **“the quality of your relationships is the single strongest predictor of happiness and health over your lifetime. Not money, not success, not status.”**
When I asked myself this question, a name popped into my head immediately: one of my old friend. We live across an ocean from each other now. We text, but I couldn’t tell you the last time we had a proper, hour-long conversation, just catching up. Mel’s advice here is brilliant and proactive. She says, **“Don't hope that it happens. Make it happen. Find a date in the calendar and schedule it. Don't wait for other people to invite you... Stop playing passive in your life and get on the offense.”**
So, after I finished the video, I sent a text to my friend. No vague “we should catch up soon.” I said, “Hey, I was thinking of you. My schedule is clearer next week. How about a phone call on Tuesday evening?” He replied in minutes, and we’re locked in. Just making that plan gave me a little burst of joy. It was a simple action that addressed a quiet, background sense of loneliness I hadn’t even fully acknowledged.
**Question Number Three: What's something that you've done recently that has brought you joy, and how can you do more of it?**
This question is about intentionally seeking out joy, rather than waiting for it to happen by accident. Mel argues that **“joy doesn't have to happen by accident in your life. Joy is something that can happen on purpose.”**
She shares two things that bring her joy. First, playing games with her family. She tells a hilarious story about playing Harry Potter Monopoly and everyone trying to do their best character voices, which had them all howling with laughter. Her second thing is gardening—specifically, the meditative act of “deadheading” flowers. She says, **“I find it so meditative... I could spend hours outside in my garden.”**
But here’s the crucial part for anyone who might be feeling too overwhelmed or burnt out to even remember what joy feels like. Mel directly addresses that person, saying:
> “Oh my god, Mel, I am so overwhelmed in my life right now. I don't even know what brings me joy. All I do is work and take care of everybody else, and I can't even get through the to-do list, and I know I'm burnt out, and I know joy is missing, and I just I don't even feel like myself.”
>
Her solution? Look through your camera roll. She says, **“There are things in your camera roll that remind you of who you are. There are things that might even make you jealous of yourself. Imagine that. You can be jealous of a former version of yourself. A version of you that made time for things that brought you joy.”**
I did this. I scrolled back a few months and saw a picture of me reading a book. No phone, no laptop, just pure happiness. And I felt a pang of… not jealousy, but longing. Somehow, I’d let that simple ritual slip away. So, my answer was clear: reading for fun, with no purpose other than enjoyment. And “doing more of it” is as simple as protecting that Saturday morning time block again.
**Question Number Four: What's one thing you've been putting off that is just draining your energy?**
Oh, man. This is the question of burdens. Mel describes these as the things that are **“so stupid and little and yet the fact that you're not doing it, it weighs on your mind.”**
Her examples are painfully relatable. A messy kitchen drawer full of placemats with, as she says, **“chunks of pasta sauce on it.”** A carpet in her son’s room that their cat repeatedly peed on, a problem a professional told her two years ago needed replacing. A small, non-cancerous skin growth on her chest that she needs to have removed—a five-minute phone call she’s been avoiding for weeks.
She talks about being inspired by a TikTok account called “How Long Does It Actually Take?” where people time themselves doing the tasks they’ve been procrastinating on for years, often finding it takes mere minutes. Her challenge is simple: **“Just pick one thing today... Set a timer. Time yourself. Like, see how long it actually takes you. Don't think. Don't make excuses. Just do it.”**
My thing? A wobbly leg on my table. For months, every time someone leans on it, the whole table shakes. It’s irritating. I’ve muttered “I need to fix that” a hundred times. After hearing this question, I went into the cabinet, found a wrench, and shimmed the leg with a folded-up piece of cardboard. It took 90 seconds. Ninety seconds to eliminate a low-grade, persistent annoyance. The feeling of lightness was immediate and profound.
**Question Number Five: What's something new that you want to try that you can do during the week?**
This final question is about breaking the routine and saving the fun for more than just the weekend. Mel points out that we often plan big things for Saturday and Sunday, but then we’re too tired or the time gets swallowed by errands. Her solution is to inject something new into a weekday.
She mentions that having a commitment, like a class or a lecture, gives you a reason to stop working on time. And there’s a bonus: she cites a study from Oxford where people who took a juggling class for six weeks literally changed their brains—the relevant parts of their cortex became thicker. So, it’s good for you!
But my favorite part of her advice is this: **“Bonus points if you bring a friend or you make a friend while you're there. And extra bonus points if it's something that you think you're really bad at.”**
Her example? She’s going to sign up for a hip-hop dance class, even though she admits she’s “terrible at choreography” and is “the person that turns in the wrong direction.” She’s doing it precisely because it’s new and she’ll be bad at it, and that’s the point—to learn and be a beginner again.
For me, the answer was clear: I’ve been wanting to dig into stoicism more. I’ve listened to tons of podcasts, but inconsistently. There’s a meetup group that meets here and this question was the push I needed. I’m going next week.
So, those are the five questions. After going through them, Mel recaps them and says something that perfectly captured how I felt:
> “Just by asking them, you get yourself closer to your right answer. And that's how you know that they are the right answers because they're the right answers for you... It'll make sense to you immediately. And then all you got to do is lean into it.”
>
That’s the genius of this exercise. It’s not about Mel giving me advice. It’s about her giving me the questions that help me uncover my own wisdom. She’s acting as the friend who asks the things we’re too busy or too avoidant to ask ourselves.
She ends by saying, **“In case no one else tells you today, 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, a life that you love... You're so much more powerful than you think. And these five powerful questions reveal that to you every time you ask them.”**
I’ll second that. If you’re feeling a little off-track, a little cluttered, a little drained, or even if you’re feeling pretty good but want to feel more intentional, I highly recommend you take 20 minutes, find a quiet spot, and ask yourself these five questions.
1. How am I *really* doing right now?
2. Who is someone I've spent time with lately, or I wish I had?
3. What's something I've done recently that brought me joy?
4. What's one thing I've been putting off that's draining my energy?
5. What's something new I want to try during the week?
You might be surprised by what you learn from the most important person you’ll talk to all day: yourself.
Thank you for listening. I’m Adam OLeary, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
