Chapter 1: What year-end ritual does Mel Robbins recommend for planning 2026?
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. It has been one heck of a year, hasn't it? Well, that's exactly why this episode and the conversation you and I are going to have today, it is arriving at the perfect moment. I am so happy you are here because today you and I are going to do something together that means so much to me.
I'm going to share a year-end ritual with you. I'm going to walk you through it. This is something my husband, Christopher, and I have done every single year, this time of year, for 22 years. There are six questions that I will walk you through that you need to answer right now if you want to make next year your best year ever.
Now, these six questions are backed by a ton of research and they guide you in both looking back at the last 12 months of your life and also looking forward. And these six questions, they just have a funny way of giving you instant clarity about what you want. I mean truly want in the coming year.
And every single time I do this exercise, I am shocked by the wisdom that comes out of the experience. And if you've done this exercise with me before, then you know just how powerful and game-changing this can be. And you're probably just as excited as I am to do it again together. And to make this year-end ritual both as powerful and as easy as it can be, check this out.
My team and I have created a free companion workbook for you. It is ready to go. I'm holding it here. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see it. It's beautiful. It's this beautiful purpley color. It just draws you right in. And here's the cool thing. You can download it right now. Just go to melrobbins.com slash best year. That's melrobbins.com slash best year.
You download this companion workbook for free. This has been a doozy of a year. And if you've had a challenging year, you deserve to make the next year your best year ever. And I promise you, these six questions, the free workbook, and how I'm about to guide you through this planning ritual right now, it is the first step to creating it. So let's dive in.
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am ecstatic that you're here today. It is such an honor to be together and to spend this time with you, but today in particular, I am fired up that you're here. And if you're a new listener, you're here because somebody shared this with you.
I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I cannot tell you how excited I am about today's conversation and the year end planning exercise that you and I are going to be doing together because I'm about to teach you how to make next year the best year of your life using six powerful questions that you need to ask yourself right now.
Now, this is a year-end ritual that my husband Christopher and I have been doing together for the last 22 years. Our three adult children now do this with us. It's based on research. It is so simple.
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Chapter 2: What are the six powerful questions to ask yourself for clarity?
It is shockingly powerful. I cannot wait for you to extract the wisdom and clarity that you need in order to make this coming year one of your best years ever. And here's one of the things I want to encourage you to do. Share it with your friends. Share it with your family. Share it with colleagues at work. In fact, you can hit the share button on this episode right now.
And when you all get together, you can print out your free workbook. Just go to melrobbins.com slash best year. And let me tell you about the workbook, okay? I got the workbook right here. It is 20 pages long. It is beautifully designed, it is free, and we designed this because it acts as a companion to the episode that you're listening to or watching here on YouTube.
And here's what I love about the workbook. The workbook is going to guide you in digging even deeper into the six questions that you're about to hear me ask you and that I'm going to be answering for myself alongside you as we go through this ritual together. And so you might be asking yourself, Why do you need to do this? Simple.
If you never stop and force yourself to take a look at your life, you miss the chance to take control of your life and make it better. See, an amazing year, an amazing life, it doesn't happen by chance. It happens by choice. And one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make when they sit down to plan the year is that they miss the critical first step of the planning process.
And I've done this too, because you're so excited to end the year, right? And to get that fresh slate and the clean start. And particularly a year like this, where it could feel like a dumpster. fire. You're like, let's just put this sucker out and move on to the next year. I'm done with 2025 for crying out loud. I just need a clean slate. I need a fresh start. I need to look ahead.
I do not want to look back. But if you only look ahead and you don't take a moment to look back at the last 12 months, you missed the single most important part of planning. And that is taking a very close look at what just happened this year. You've experienced so many things, good and bad. You've had highs, you've had lows, you've had lessons, you've had wins, you've had losses.
And if you're like me, you've probably forgotten 99% of them, really. I mean, you might think you remember what happened in the last 12 months, but you don't. You can't trust your brain. And that's reason number one that we're going to, in a very specific way, we're going to look backward before we start to look forward. So I don't want you to answer the questions based on memory.
One thing that I find very helpful is that not only are you gonna have your workbook next to you, and if you don't have the workbook, no problem, you can just use a piece of paper, but the second thing I want you to have when you sit down and truly take the time to go through this planning ritual and to ask yourself these six questions and to really dig deep and answer them,
I want you to have your phone next to you.
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Chapter 3: How can you use your camera roll to reflect on the past year?
I'd like to be in better shape. I'd like to travel a little bit more. I'd like to change my job. I'd like to learn new skills. That's fantastic. But it only tells me where you want to go. Consider this. You can't create directions for where you want to go unless you know where you're starting from. In fact, it's mathematically impossible to create directions unless you know the starting point
and then where you want to go from there. And you also cannot create a plan for where you want to go next year that's going to work until you fully understand exactly where you're starting from right now. In fact, this is my favorite part about planning for next year.
My favorite part is looking back at the past 12 months and extracting everything I can from it because I don't want you to repeat the same mistakes. I want you to double down on what went well. I want you to pull out the lessons and carry them forward because you're going to use them to make this next year of your life one of the best years of your life ever.
And it is one of the secrets to my success because it really helps me get intentional about what I want. And so before I came up here to talk to you and share this exercise with you, I went into Chris's office. And I went through his files and I found this folder and it's labeled 2006 goals. And you can see this is a very old folder.
I opened it up and I found the original planning that Chris and I did in 2004. Oh my gosh, this is so cute. I wanted to get pregnant. And I wanted to get pregnant and have a little boy. Oh my gosh, that's so awesome. This is before Oakley was born. How cool. Oh gosh, I'm still working at getting out of bed. I wanted to consistently get out of bed at 6 a.m. This is so cute.
Chris has got stuff on here, a lot about health. But anyway, it's just amazing to look back on this. And we started doing this with our kids about 10 years ago. And so I have been doing this for 22 years.
When people ask me, what is one of the secrets of your success, other than hard work and doing the things you don't feel like doing and obsessing over the details because that's what makes you exceptional instead of just good at something,
This planning exercise is an example of a secret that I have been using for 22 years so that no matter what's going on in the world around me, I take the time to get very clear about what I want, very clear about what's working, what's not working, and I use this exercise to
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Chapter 4: What are the benefits of reflecting on low points from the past year?
If I really think about it in the broadest sense, as a way to change the settings in my mind, this is what a lot of the neuroscientists have talked about on this podcast, to intentionally program my mind and let it know what's important to me. There's one piece of research I want to call your attention to.
It's from California State University and UCLA, and they looked just at the act of writing a short letter to your future self. Now, this research appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied, and here's what the research found. When you spend even a few minutes connecting the dots between who you've been
who you are right now and who you wanna become in the future, research shows that you feel even more closely bonded to the future version of you. Isn't that kind of cool? That just taking the time right now with me, or if you're gonna do this whole process after you listen and watch once through, and then you're gonna go and do it with people that you care about, simply taking the time
to look at the last 12 months, to think about the future, to write all this stuff down, you're going to feel more strongly connected to the version of you that you see in the future. In this study, the people who took the time to connect the dots between who I have been and who I really want to become, they exercise more.
They were more intentional about how they went through their day-to-day life. Just a tiny writing exercise changed real-world behavior. And that's exactly what answering these six questions is going to do for you. Because you're taking the time to do this.
And that means you're intentionally creating this bridge between where you are right now and the version of yourself in the future that you want to grow into. Makes sense, right? Of course it does. So let's go through the first three questions and we're gonna do this together. And question number one is, what were the low points of your year? And here's why I wanna start here.
I wanna start with what were the lowest points of your year? Because if you had a lot of low points this year, you're not alone. I mean, you might be waking up most days with this low grade sense of dread right now. Maybe you've been in a constant state of worry. It's been in the back of your mind.
You're constantly worried about money or politics or war or the climate or your kids or parents or your health, all of it. So if life has felt hard a lot of the time these last 12 months, here's the first thing I want you to know. That doesn't mean it was a bad year. That doesn't mean anything is wrong with you. First of all, it means you're alive and you're paying attention.
And I don't want you to beat yourself up because here's the funny thing about low moments and hard years. If I think about my life, not that anybody deserves a hard year, but if I think about my life, I learned the most and made the biggest positive changes in my life after the hardest years of my life. And that's not to say that you deserve to be struggling. I'm not saying that at all.
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Chapter 5: What lessons can you learn from the highs of your past year?
And this is what psychologists call intrinsic motivation. It's the internal fuel that comes from you having a deeply personal meaning tied to the types of things you want to change this year. Because if it really matters to you to not be lonely again this year, because as you scrolled through the photos, you're like, I didn't spend any time with my friends. No wonder I'm really lonely.
It really matters to me. Like this is something I deserve. This is something I need. This is something I get to do is to prioritize this. If I saw my friends more, it would be one of the best years ever. Well, when you can connect what you want to do to that deep intrinsic meaning for you, you will do something about it because you know why it matters to you.
If you keep seeing yourself standing in the back of every photo because you don't like how you look, if you see yourself taking photos of your family but you're sitting on the bench while they're off on the hike, if it really matters to you to not be out of breath when you're walking up the stairs because you're starting to say, hey, some of the low moments is I didn't opt in.
I didn't feel good about myself. I didn't participate with my kids or my friends the way that I wanted to. When you connect it to something you deserve, when you connect it to something that will make your year better, when you do it for you because you get to and because you deserve to, that's that intrinsic motivation. That's how we create the best year ever.
And that's why you can't skip this question. Okay, here's a major low point for me. I don't even want to show you this photo. This is me on January 26th. I am so sick. I missed a friend's wedding. I had worked myself into the ground. I was in bed for four days. I... Oh, Mel. You really need to take a break, woman. I mean, wow. Wow. Okay, let's keep going back.
There's lots of photos of hotels, of airports, of me on the go, go, go. You know, and look, I can't really complain about work because I'm self-employed. I did it to myself. And this year has been just unbelievable. I think it's like the highlight of my career. That said, I did not take care of myself at all. I was inconsistent with exercise.
I could get my morning walk in, but you know how all the experts are constantly like, you got to get a lot of protein, you got to do your resistance training, you got to stay hydrated. I did not do a good job of that. I mean, how could I if I was just go, go, go, go, go? It's so hard to It's hard to implement the advice when you're constantly stressed and you're constantly worried.
And it's not even that it was like negative stress. It was just constantly on the go. And you might see that too, that in and among all the photos, what you're not seeing is you taking care of yourself. You're just seeing yourself on the move and doing things.
And that's very, very evident that despite the fact that I really wanted to take better care of myself, I'm embarrassed to tell you it was even a goal last year of mine to do more strength training, to eat more protein.
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Chapter 6: How can you identify what to stop, start, or continue doing in the new year?
It just, like, spills over into the next day. Because there's a lot of photos in here that I'm not going to show you of me... taking a selfie in bed and I just am clearly exhausted. And that's because I ran myself into the ground and I was sending the selfie to my husband. And I have more photos of my two dogs and my cats than I do my family or my friends. That's a problem.
Another low point, Oakley left for sophomore year. And I don't know about what anyone else feels, but in terms of the empty nest thing, the first year there's such a buildup That, I don't know, I felt really sad and the house was incredibly quiet, but I also saw it as this amazing opportunity. And then, you know, they come back. They come back for a break. They come back.
They come back for the summer. There was something about him leaving this fall for the second year that it's like, oh, oh, this is actually the new reality. Oh, oh. He's going to come back less and less. And oh, I better wake up and not just expect to see the kids because they're coming home. I got to get very intentional about going to them.
And that's a really important insight that comes from seeing the low point, that the house was really quiet. I worked too much. I didn't see my friends enough. I took kind of lousy care of myself. And that's the truth. That's the truth. I got to do better this year. I just have to do better. Have to do better. And here's what I want you to understand. Do you see how I'm not shaming myself?
I'm just being like, matter of fact. Matter of fact, this is what happened. Matter of fact, okay. Because when you tell the truth about what knocked you down, what drained you, what broke your heart, you're not being dramatic. You're being self-aware. And that awareness is the starting point for change. And that brings me to the second question.
If we're going to look at the lows, we're also going to look at the highs. So as you're going through here, I want you to look at the things that were highs for you. And it doesn't necessarily mean the big flashy stuff.
I mean, one of the huge highs for me is even though we didn't get a great family photo of the five of us, I'm talking like one that everybody in the family would be like, oh, I love that. One of my huge highlights of these last 12 months is I spent a ton of time with family. I made an effort to see my parents. They made an effort to come see me.
My husband and I made an effort to go to where our kids were and to spend time with them. We did some really amazing family things in terms of camping and experiences that we did together. I made a point to do a trip solo with my daughter, Kendall, something we had never done, just the two of us. And think about that, she's 25 years old.
But because she's my middle daughter, every time I would go on a mother-daughter trip when they were little, I'd always take Sawyer too. And if Sawyer wasn't with us, we always went with another mother-daughter. I'd never done anything with just Kendall. It was incredible. I'm sitting here looking at these photos of us at Round Top.
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Chapter 7: What new goals or habits should you consider starting in 2026?
What you want more of. The highs show you what you're willing to work for. What I also love about the highs is that you're going to notice there are these small moments that really... are the big moments. Here's a photo that I'm looking at right now of Chris and Oakley and I. We went and surprised him.
He was playing at this big ultimate tournament and he's got tears in his eyes as, you know, he's just hugged Chris and he couldn't believe we were there. That was a huge high for me that moment. I mean, it's the little stuff, honestly, that you're going to notice are the things that really mean a lot to you.
Maybe you're in a job where you sit all day, but this year you started walking in the morning and you see photos in your camera roll of, you know, the little hearts, whether it's the rocks or the leaves or things on your walks that you notice. There were tons of flowers on my camera roll. Maybe it was a really good book that you read. I read one of my favorite books of all time.
This was a high, The Emperor of Gladness is here. Or it was a photo or a painting that you hung in your living room that makes you smile every time you walk past it. All of that counts. Like anything that puts a smile or a aww on your heart. One of the most amazing highs was we went to the Coldplay concert. And if you've ever been to a Coldplay concert, they do all these explosions of confetti.
In fact, it's the thing that inspired me to shower the audience with huge ticker tape confetti at the Let Them Tour. Wait till you experience this if you're coming on tour with us in 2026. And there are all these photos from this summer when we were at the Coldplay concert and the confetti flying through the air and our kids in it.
That is something I'm going to remember, the, oh, the smile and the, oh, because the more you look for good things, the more you see them. And I've already said that I kind of feel like I am in the single biggest moment of my career. That what has happened this year in my life, in my career, with this podcast, with the Let Them Theory book, it is nothing short of jaw-dropping.
Like never in my wildest dreams have could I have imagined what has happened? And so I do want to take a moment and just thank you because you're a huge highlight of my year. The way that you showed up for yourself and started listening to a podcast that makes you feel good and that empowers you to make changes in your life that make you feel better.
We are the number one most followed show on all of Apple podcasts. Are you kidding me? My jaw's on the floor. The number one most shared episode on all of Apple podcasts is a Mel Robbins podcast episode, the one that we did with Dr. Stacey Sims from Stanford, who came on and... taught us how to do the body reset. In fact, I was joking with her this morning. I'm like, I blame you, Dr. Sims.
I blame you because you're the one that told me I had to start doing resistance training. You're the one that told me the importance and the critical nature of getting complete protein in my life. You're the one that put me on this like journey of understanding that I needed to do this because it's very hard. to get the amount of protein that you need.
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Chapter 8: How does Mel Robbins plan to implement her new business venture in 2026?
And I think it's important for you when you have a win, that you claim it too, that you celebrate it too. And so thank you. Thank you for being a huge part of this success. Thank you for being interested in making your life better. Thank you for recommending the episodes that have made a difference for you with the people that you care about. I just, I am deeply humbled by what's happening.
And then that brings me to the Let Them Tour. That was one of the most fun and rewarding experiences of my life. I met so many of you in person. You know, when I sit here above my garage or I'm in the studios in downtown Boston, I don't see you. And I don't see, like, what you're doing with this as you're doing this.
I can imagine it because I read the comments and I read the emails you send in the inbox and we circulate those to the team. But it was so extraordinary to be in the same room with you and to feel the collective energy that happens when you're with a group of people who want the best for themselves and they want it for everybody around them too. I mean, that's just extraordinary.
But the single best part was actually doing the tour experience with my daughter Sawyer and my daughter Kendall. I don't know why I thought that doing skits in front of a live audience about our mother-daughter issues would be fun, because it wasn't fun until we kind of got into the rhythm of it. But here's the thing that I will claim as the highlight.
The highlight is that at the age of 56, I forced myself to do something I had never done before. I'd never acted. I'd never done comedy. I'd never put on a show like that. And it was so hard and so incredible at the same time. And I just grew and I grew and I grew because of it. So don't overthink it. Just scroll through the photos, scroll through your calendars and ask yourself, was it fun?
Did this experience lighten you up? Did it make you feel like yourself? Is there something about this that makes you want to do more of it in the coming year? If the answer is yes, it goes on the list. This was a highlight. And, you know, I even kind of shudder to tell you the good stuff about me because it's so once in a lifetime stuff. But if you've got something that's once in a lifetime,
Your first baby was born. Your grandchild was born. You got married to the love of your life. If you put on an art exhibit at your local town and people showed up, that's a high. If you got into nursing school, if you got through nursing school, if you decided that you were going to change your major because you didn't like accounting or medicine, that's a high.
claim these things because they say something about you. Now, before we jump into question three, I want to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. And during this break, if you haven't yet, make sure you grab your companion workbook at melrobbins.com slash best year.
And take a second and share this episode with everybody in your life because we all deserve this incredible six question end of year reset and the free workbook that goes with it. And maybe this is something you could do together. I mean, I love doing this with my family. I'm doing it with you, but I'm going to then take the workbook and we are all going to print it out.
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