The Mel Robbins Podcast
This Conversation Will Change Your Life: Do This to Find Purpose & Meaning
Thu, 5 Jun 2025
Today, Mel sits down with one of the most extraordinary guests to ever appear on this podcast. If you’ve ever asked yourself: What’s my purpose? How can I make a difference? How do I stay hopeful when the world feels broken? This is the conversation that will change the way you think about your own power to lead a life that matters. Bryan Stevenson is Mel's personal hero, and what he shares in this episode will change how you see yourself. He is a world-renowned civil rights lawyer and author of Just Mercy, one of the most powerful books of our time which was turned into a movie in which Michael B. Jordan played Bryan. Bryan is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and has argued and won cases before the United States Supreme Court. He has saved over 140 people from death row, many of them who were wrongly convicted, and his work has fundamentally transformed the conversation about justice, mercy, and human dignity. His life’s mission is proving one powerful truth: You are not defined by your worst mistake. And neither is anyone else. This episode will shake you, open you, and move you to action. You’ll learn: – 3 life-changing lessons from the lawyer who’s saved 140 lives – The mindset that will help you stay hopeful, even in the darkest moments – Why compassion is courage — and how to practice it daily – How to live a life that reflects what you truly believe – Why the smallest actions often create the biggest change If you’re feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, or unsure how to make a real difference, this episode is for you. For more resources, click here for the podcast episode page. If you liked this episode, you’ll love listening to this one next: How to Find Your Purpose & Design the Life You WantConnect with Mel: Get Mel’s #1 bestselling book, The Let Them TheoryWatch the episodes on YouTubeFollow Mel on Instagram The Mel Robbins Podcast InstagramMel's TikTok Sign up for Mel’s personal letter Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes ad-freeDisclaimer
Chapter 1: Who is Bryan Stevenson and why is he important?
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I feel deeply honored because you and I are going to spend some time with my personal hero. His name, Bryan Stevenson. Bryan Stevenson's words, his mission, his work have changed the way I see the world. Bryan has challenged me to do more than just care.
He's pushed me to be more compassionate, more curious about other people's struggles, and more willing to take action when it really counts. Brian believes that you are not defined by your worst mistake or your worst day. That's why this conversation matters. It's about seeing something bigger than yourself. It's about asking better questions instead of making quick judgments.
It's about seeing the good that you've been taught to overlook. And it's also about realizing that you have the power to create change. Bryan Stevenson is the world-renowned constitutional law and civil rights lawyer, a Harvard Law and Harvard Kennedy School graduate, and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, and the author of the mega-bestseller must-read book, Just Mercy.
He has argued and won cases before the Supreme Court, and he has saved 140 people from death row. He has devoted his entire life to challenging injustice, standing up for the poor, the incarcerated, and the forgotten, fighting for those who have been cast aside, people the world often see as not worth helping.
Brian will show you what it looks like to lead with empathy and to stand for justice even when it feels hard or it feels like it's not going to matter. It always matters.
So if you've ever struggled to have compassion for other people or for yourself, if you believe the world needs more kindness and you're ready to take even the smallest action that could make a difference, if you want to feel more compassion, purpose, hope, and meaning in your life, this conversation is for you.
Because the way you choose to show up every day of your life, starting today, matters. And the perfect person to show you how to lead with a spirit of hope and compassion and love is named Bryan Stevenson, and he is here to teach you how. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am absolutely thrilled that you're here. I have goosebumps.
I cannot wait for our conversation today. And look, it's always an honor to spend time with you and to be together, but today is Oh my gosh, we get to spend time together with somebody who has been a mentor, a personal hero of mine. His work, his life inspires me so much. So I just am thrilled that we get to be together for this.
And if you're a new listener, I just want to take a minute and welcome you personally to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I'm glad that you're here. And because you made the time to listen to this particular episode, here's what it tells me. It tells me you're the kind of person who really cares.
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Chapter 2: What lessons can we learn from compassion?
And the question I had in my mind is, why do we want to kill all the broken people? What is it about us that when we see brokenness in other people, we want to hurt them for it, kill them for it? I represent the broken. All of my clients have been broken by poverty, broken by trauma, broken by addiction, broken by illness, broken by disability, broken by despair.
And then I realized I work in a broken system because the people with power won't get proximate. They don't have hope. They're unwilling to be compassionate. And I was sitting there just thinking about why do I do what I do? And that was the moment when I had this realization that I don't do what I do because I've been trained as a lawyer. I don't do what I do because somebody has to do it.
I don't even do what I do because it's about human rights or justice. That's part of it. But what I realized that night that I'd never realized before is that I do what I do because I'm broken too. I am not unflawed. I am not unblemished. I am not uncomplicated in the same ways that the people I represent are. But I do believe in the power of redemption. I do believe in grace.
I do believe in mercy. I do believe in restoration because I have been the beneficiary of so much grace and so much mercy. That man, before he was executed, gave me something so powerful, so beautiful, so affirming. And that's why I think we should do better for the broken. that we encounter. We should think better of the broken that we encounter.
Because just as we can give to them, they can give to us. And it does, for me, become important to talk about the fact that we can't create a perfect world, but we can create a world that's filled with more grace, more mercy, and more love.
Brian, I would love to go back and have you share a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today.
I'm grateful that I am the heir of so many hopeful people, people who had to do things much harder than I've had to do. By living in Montgomery, Alabama, I have a vantage point that I feel really privileged by. The generation of people who came before me in that community would have to put on their Sunday best.
They'd go places to push for the right to vote, push for the right to be treated fairly. They'd be on their knees praying, and they'd get beaten and battered and bloodied. And they'd go home and change their clothes and wipe the blood off, and they'd go and do it again. Right. And I haven't been beaten and battered and bloodied as the people who came before me.
I stand on the shoulders of people who did so much more with so much less. It's their hope that shapes my hope. My great-grandfather was enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia. When I went to Harvard Law School, they tried to make everybody feel welcome on the first day. And they took out groups of 13 students. And my group leader just asked everybody in the group, why are you in law school?
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Chapter 3: How can we make a difference in the world?
And then lawyers came into our community and made them open up the public schools. And because these lawyers got proximate to poor kids like me, I got to go to the public schools.
Now, how old are you, Brian?
I am 65.
See, I think it is shocking. To just consider that there are people in the United States, you're only 65 years old. That's right. And when you were in elementary school, you're just 10 years older than me.
Yeah.
You were in an elementary school segregated for colored children.
Yeah.
I mean, that is, it is so... just shocking to me how we have forgotten the history that is even so recent and the ways it's playing out to this day.
Yeah, I think that's so true, Mel. And I do think one of the We have tolerated is our unwillingness to remember, to confront honestly this history. There are people in other parts of the country who are 15 years younger than me who didn't experience integration in education before. until the 1970s, late 1970s, because there was so much resistance to this.
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Chapter 4: What does it mean to be proximate to those in need?
So we were able to get him out of that facility that day and ultimately was able to get a resolution of the case where he got released. After he got out, he got his high school degree, his GED. Then he went to college. He actually became an engineer. He got married. He has a beautiful family.
And I know the day of his release, it's the 11th, because on the 11th of every month for the last 18 years, at 8 a.m. exactly, This young man calls me and he says, hey, Mr. Bryan, just want you to know I'm doing great and I love you. Every month for 18 years. And that's the beauty that comes out of reacting, responding to injustice when we see it, abuse when we see it. And I can't quantify that.
The value that gives my life, the joy that gives me, it's priceless as far as I'm concerned. And I think when we hold our children that are struggling, that are in places of despair, that have been traumatized, and we look for ways to make things better, there's a return on that.
This feels like a good moment to take a quick pause and give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. And while they do, please share this conversation with people that you care about. I feel my heart expanding. I feel my mind opening up. I feel inspired and empowered and hopeful. And I know anybody that you share this with is going to feel that exact same thing.
And don't go anywhere because Bryan Stevenson and I are going to be waiting for you after this short break. So stay with us. Welcome back. It is such an honor to be here together with you and to get to spend time with the extraordinary Bryan Stevenson. So, Bryan, throughout the incredible book, Just Mercy, you talk about this landmark case.
Where for years and years and years, you saw hope and possibility where no one else did. You believed in a person who had been not just condemned, but set up, railroaded every... The case is so shocking. And there's a level of arrogance and gaslighting that we do to ourselves. You know, as I was reading this and I'm thinking, this happened in 1988? Yeah. That's not a long time ago.
This was happening when I was in college. It's probably still happening today. For the person who hasn't either seen the movie Just Mercy or read your book, can you tell us a little bit about this case?
Sure. It involves a man named Walter McMillan who was accused of killing a young white woman in Monroeville, Alabama. And it is shocking in a lot of ways. One of the things that was immediately fascinating to me about this case is that Monroeville, Alabama is the community where Harper Lee grew up and wrote the story To Kill a Mockingbird. And so Monroeville...
prides itself on being the birthplace, the home place of that story. And so every year they put on a play, the streets are named after characters in the book. It's a big deal. You can go to the courthouse where they filmed the movie, scenes from the movie, and people say, oh, you can go stand where Gregory Peck stood. They romanticized this story of To Kill a Mockingbird.
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Chapter 5: How does our past shape our perspective on justice?
And I would get death threats when I go into the community. We had bomb threats. We had to clear our office on multiple occasions because somebody had... made bomb threats. I started using different names. If I tried to stay in a hotel, we used rental cars because I was constantly being followed. There was so much resistance.
And then the ultimate insult in many ways was after having a good day in court, as you described, coming back the next day and then simply not letting people into the courtroom. And I went over to the door and said, I want to go inside because the community leader said, oh, they won't let us in. I said, what do you mean? And I went over and I said, I want to go inside.
And the deputy there says, oh, you can't come in. I said, well, I'm the defense attorney. I think I have to be able to come in. He said, well, let me go check. And he came back. He said, well, you can come in. And I go in there and I see they've changed things around. They've put a metal detector inside the courtroom door. It already cleared one to get into the courthouse.
And then on the other side of the metal detector, there was this huge German shepherd dog just kind of leering. And I look into the courtroom. It's been filled with people who are not sympathetic to Mr. McMillan. I complained to the judge. The judge said, oh, your people have to get here earlier tomorrow. I said, judge, that wasn't the problem. They didn't let them in.
Judge paid no attention, explained to the community what had happened. They said, we will be here earlier tomorrow. There were a few seats left, and they identified this older woman as And my relationship to this work is because of people like this older woman. She was so proud to be given the responsibility of being one of the witnesses for the community. And she fixed herself up.
She walked over to the door. They let people in. And she walked through the door with such grace and such dignity. She held her head up high. She had this hat on. She walked through the metal detector. But when she saw the dog... You could just see the fear paralyze her. She stopped dead in her tracks, and I watched her try to move, try to take a step, and she couldn't do it.
And her body began to shake, and her head drooped, and I saw tears start running down her face. And then I heard her groan really loudly, and then watched her turn around and run out the courtroom. Painful thing to see. Other people came inside. We had a really good day in court that day. I was heading home, and she was still sitting outside. And when she saw me, she came over to me.
She said, oh, Mr. Stevenson, I feel so bad. She said, I let you down today. I let everybody down today. I said, Ms. Williams, it's not your fault. They shouldn't have done what they did. She said, no, no, no, no, no. I was supposed to be in that courtroom. I should have been in that courtroom. And she started crying. I said, Ms. Williams, please don't feel bad.
They shouldn't have done what they did. She said, no, no, no. I was meant to be in that courtroom. I should have been in that courtroom. She said, but when I saw that dog, all I could think about was Selma, Alabama, 1965. And I remember how they put those dogs on us. And I tried to make myself move, but I just couldn't do it. Her sister told me that night when they got home. that Ms.
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Chapter 6: Why is it crucial to see people as more than their worst mistakes?
Our hope is what can sustain us when things look bleak and difficult. And that is the reason why I believe that hopelessness is the enemy of justice. Justice will prevail if we allow ourselves to give in to hopelessness. Hope is our superpower. It's the thing that will get some of us to stand up even when people say sit down. It will get some of us to speak even when people say be quiet.
It's the thing that will get us to believe we can do things that maybe other people think we can't do. I have to give it to my clients, and I can't give someone something I don't have. And so for me, it's an orientation of the Spirit. You know, Vaclav Havel, the great Czech leader, talked about wanting all kinds of things during the time of Soviet domination.
And he said, we wanted money and recognition and resources, but the only thing we needed, he said, was hope. And Havel says the kind of hope you need is not a preference for optimism over pessimism. It's not a pie-in-the-sky thing. He says it's an orientation of the Spirit, a willingness to sometimes position yourself in a hopeless place and be a witness.
And that, I do think, is the gift I've been given by so many people who've come before me, so many people who have done things with fewer resources, fewer opportunities, fewer supports than I have. And it's what I want to give to the people who come after me.
is, you know, this idea that if we can labor long and save lives and change the law and create perhaps a slightly more just system, then we have to continue to hope we can do more.
For a person who's listening, who's really struggling with cultivating that hope for themselves, do you have anything that you would advise someone to do to help them cultivate it for themselves or someone else?
Yeah, I think learning about hope is... is a really important action item. Sometimes I think we don't think of learning as an action item, but I do. I think to learn is to do something.
And learning the stories of what hopeful people did despite the odds is one of the most important things we can do to prepare ourselves, to train ourselves, our minds and our bodies to do hopeful things in our lives. Just like we have to train ourselves if we want to be fit or run a race. I think we have to train ourselves, prepare ourselves to be hopeful in the midst of so many difficulties.
And the world is just filled of stories about hopeful people. And I think we need to learn them and be shaped by them. I never really talked much about my grandmother or my great-grandparents who were enslaved. until I was in my 40s. I didn't want to forget about it. It just wasn't relevant in my head. Now I talk about them all the time.
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Chapter 7: How can we practice stone-catching in our lives?
We're going to teach you something about parts of our history that aren't pleasant, but we think they're necessary to understand and know. And I hope we prepare people to be better informed, better citizens, better stewards of the opportunities we have to create a more just world.
Where can you sign up for that free daily email?
It's EJI.org, and we're on all of the social media sites, and so you can sign up there as well. But yeah, particularly now when there's such resistance to honest education about some of these topics, I think it's going to become even more important. that we be informed, that we be aware of the lessons we can learn from the misery of history.
There are lessons we learn from the glory of history, but there are also lessons we must learn from the misery of history. And the more I do this work, the more I've come to believe that memory is the justice we owe the 10 million Black people who endured the immense suffering and constant sorrow of slavery.
When we censor knowledge and understanding of that history, when we restrict and limit what people learn about it, what we do is not just dishonest, it's unjust. And so if we're called to do justice, we have to find a way to embrace this. You know, for a hundred years, we pulled Black people out of their homes and they were beaten and tortured and lynched on courthouse lawns.
And we've hardly talked about it. That era of segregation that I was born into, the humiliation and degradation of that should not just be the burden of the people who experienced that. It should be all of our burden. And when we understand that, then we commit to never again tolerating that kind of bigotry. We commit to due process.
We commit to the rule of law because we know that mob violence and fear and anger will create destruction and harm and hardship to people who are othered. And I think a consciousness about that is really key to how we move forward. And so... Yes, I do believe that learning at this moment, all across the globe, is going to be a vital action item.
Well, there's no way you can learn from mistakes and misery if you don't acknowledge it. That's right. If you deny it existed. If you lie and say, no, no, no, that didn't happen that way. That's right. That's the only way you learn.
Absolutely. And the beautiful thing is that on the other side of that learning... You get to understand what hope can yield. We have an exhibit in our museum. It's 800 jars of soil. And we have a project where we're trying to put markers at every lynching site in America.
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