The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Secret to Stopping Fear & Creating the Future You Want with Shonda Rhimes
10 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. How many times have you tried to escape your life by plopping down on the couch, turning on the TV, and just disappearing into your favorite show and the characters that you're watching?
Well, what if I told you, as Shonda Rhimes was writing and producing some of the most successful shows in the history of television, Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton, she herself was doing the exact same thing, escaping her life through the imaginary worlds that she had created. Shonda was deeply introverted, afraid of everything.
All she did was work and her life was getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And then her sister said something that changed everything. Shonda spent the next year saying yes to everything that scared her. And the result? It changed her entire life, her personality, her happiness, her body, the way she was able to be creative.
Chapter 2: How did Shonda Rhimes confront her fears?
Well, today you're going to hear one of the most personal interviews that Shonda has ever given. And Shonda will tell you, if you feel small, If you're tired of saying yes to everybody else, if you're done with letting fear dictate your life, she knows what that feels like.
And she's also going to tell you there's a bigger possibility for your life just waiting for you, that you're more capable than you know. But it's not in escaping it. It's saying yes to it.
The reason for the arrival is the regular check-up of the health center. Sometimes there is pain in the joints. In the fingers, there is a lack of symptoms. The customer tells us that he is working as a team at the packaging line, temporarily in non-ergonomic settings. After a long period of work experience, however, he has found workable teeth for the next 100 years.
We focus on health so that the teeth can focus more. The health center is the official work health partner of the Santa Claus.
Chapter 3: What changes did Shonda make to stop living small?
When we left for the winter holiday, I thought we would go by car first. But then we went by train and dad drove our car there. Then we spent the night on the train. The sleeping car was really nice, except I wanted to sleep upstairs. But my sister went there when she was older. And in the morning, when I woke up, we were together. Freedom travels by rail. VR. On a joint journey.
Olipa kerran hyvä haltija, joka loihti taikasauvallaan herkullisen jouluaterjan kaikille metsän asukeille. Siinä oli tarjolla jos jonkinmoista herkkua. Oli rosollia, silakkaa, kinkkua, laatikoita, graavattua lohka ja... Jaha. Joo, tämähän ei ollutkaan joulusatu. Tämähän olikin ostoslista. Ja se on pitkä. No, onneksi kaikki ainekset herkulliseen jouluun saat. S-Marketista.
Joulu on ruokaa. S-Market.
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you are here with me right now. It is always an honor to be together and to spend this time with you, but today is going to be extraordinary. And if you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this with you, first of all, I want to personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family.
And boy, oh boy, did you pick an incredible episode to listen to. Because today in our Boston studios, we have the one, the only Shonda Rhimes. She is an award-winning television creator, producer, author, and CEO of the global media company Shondaland, who took over the world through television.
She's created Grey's Anatomy, which is on its 22nd season, one of the longest-running medical dramas of all time. She followed it up with Scandal, Private Practice, producing How to Get Away with Murder. Then she flipped the industry again, producing Bridgerton, one of Netflix's biggest global hits. Shonda's written more than 600 hours of primetime television.
Her shows have won Emmys, Golden Globes, a Peabody. She's an inductee in the Television Hall of Fame.
She has also written a New York Times bestselling book called Year of Yes, and that's why she's here today, to talk about how fear disguises itself as perfection, how no can become a comfort zone that slowly shrinks your life and kills your joy, and how learning to say yes, especially to yourself, can change everything. This conversation is not about what Shonda has built.
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Chapter 4: How can saying yes transform your life?
It's about what she almost lost and how she got it back. Shonda Rhimes, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you for making the trip. I'm so excited to meet you.
I've admired your work for a very long time, and I'm excited to have the chance to learn from you, and I'm excited for the person that's with us right now to be inspired by and motivated by and transformed by the things you're about to share. And that's where I want to start. If I take everything to heart that you're about to share with us and teach us today, what could change about my life?
So many things could change about your life. I think the point is for you to figure out where the problems are in your life and how you can take the things that you've been living with but been dissatisfied by and change them. I mean, that's really the goal.
you know, I tore through your book. I want you to go out and buy this book. It is absolutely fabulous. It is going to be absolutely everywhere. Everyone's going to be talking about it. But what I found was really interesting, and you're going to find this to be interesting too, is that when you originally wrote the book, you were at the height of your career. I mean, you were winning.
You were just like everything. And yet, you felt like you were hiding?
I really did. You know, it's interesting. Yeah, it was, I owned all of Thursday night and things were going great. I realized that my characters were living these extraordinary, amazing, imaginative, great lives. And I was living in a very small corner of my own life and not willing to step out of it. I was saying no to everything that anybody asked me to do.
I was very shy, very, I mean, I had confidence in my writing and that was probably about it. But I was not, I did not have confidence in myself when I was not a character, you know, when I wasn't writing in the voice of a character. And my life had become really, really small and very unhappy.
I think so many of us can relate to this idea that life starts to feel very small. And the other thing that really struck me about that is that you had, at least in the world, like you've got a very unique life because in your writing and in the shows that you're producing and all the stories that you're telling, you are actually seeing the characters come to life. Yes.
But even if you don't have that kind of job in the world, you have an imagination, you have dreams for yourself. And I would love to hear you talk just a little bit for the person listening that really relates to that feeling and that sense of being shy or more introverted or feeling that your life is small.
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Chapter 5: What role does fear play in decision-making?
But the reality of it is, is most of us are blocked by this huge chasm of fear, right? Being afraid to actually do the thing, being stopped by it simply because you don't even know how to begin, being too afraid to just make the leap because what if it doesn't work out? That I think is what stops most of us. And then to make that leap and to leap into it is a really terrifying thing.
So I think it's really relatable to have that level of fear and this block between where you want to be, like where you imagine you can be and where you think you could actually get to.
Well, what's fascinating about your life, and when you read the book, you're really going to get a sense of this, is that your life from the outside looks so big and is so impactful. And so it is kind of stunning when you really read and start to understand that your experience was that it was really small and you were saying no to things. Like, what were you afraid of? I think everything.
I mean, I really do think I was a person who uniquely was raised with a very big confidence in my writing voice, right? So I was very comfortable with that. But anything else, I was not. I lived through and had for my whole life, basically, lived through stories. I experienced things that way. I wrote about things. I worked things out psychologically by writing them down.
None of it had anything to do with being in the actual real world. You know, none of it. And so I was always very awkward in the real world. It was a very different environment than the world inside my head. And in a weird way, it hampered me because I did stay in my imagination, right?
All the things you imagine and dream, well, I could make those things come true by putting them on the television screen and sharing them with an audience. But that had nothing to do with me personally.
You know what I just had this crazy vision of? I had this incredible vision of you in your, you know, at your desk, you're writing all this stuff, you're up in your imagination and living in this world, and yet you have this experience of having this small world and yet feeling blocked by fear.
Do you know how many millions of people around the world were sitting on their couches, escaping their small lives through the characters and the worlds that you were building? And when you watch the work that you do, you can't help but think of something bigger. You can't help but think about different relationships. Can't help but think about different moments in history.
And you open us up to this bigger possibility, but then you know what happens?
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Chapter 6: How can we learn to say no effectively?
Exactly. I just got to live in it longer. And so in a lot of ways was tricked by it longer, I think, because I was living this glorious existence inside of a television screen on a soundstage that had nothing to do with the world.
Why does saying no and allowing your fear of trying anything new or putting yourself out there or even just showing up at a networking event or whatever it may be that you're saying no to, why does that feel like it's safe or it's somehow protecting you?
Well, I mean, you know the environment at home. You know the environment you're in. There's nothing unknown about it. You know, there's no like, what am I going to say if I meet these new people or what if I say something stupid? I'm at home in my pajamas on a sofa with a laptop. You know, that's a world I know and I'm very comfortable with.
I don't really have to get outside of it because in that world, I'm still the same way. I'm watching television shows and I'm imagining and I'm having a great time, but I'm not experiencing anything new and I'm not challenging myself. And it's much safer that way. I mean, I think for a lot of people, it feels much safer.
It does. And I'm so glad that this book is being re-released with all new stories and chapters right now. And I'm going to tell you why. I think in the last several years post-pandemic and with a hybrid work world and so much time online, people have become more afraid and more kind of self-silencing and saying no when life can be so much bigger.
What were some of the things that you were saying no to? Like how, how like shut down and small, because it's hard to believe, like I can imagine myself on the couch knowing what I'm saying no to, but it is hard to believe. So what does it mean when it says you were living a small life and you were saying no?
I mean, it means I had three or four great friends that I'd known since college and those were my friends. And I wasn't meeting anybody new. It means that I remember somebody wonderful wanted to throw me a dinner party. And they were like, it's going to be this intimate gathering of just other women writers. And I couldn't get there.
I was so stressed out about the whole concept of it and what it would mean. I literally couldn't do it. And it was going to be something wonderful. I know I was going to miss something wonderful. I literally couldn't make it out the door. It's that kind of thing. I was saying no to dinner parties. I was saying no to going to events with friends.
I was saying no to going anywhere alone, anywhere alone. I was saying no to traveling. I was saying no, I mean, you name it, I was saying no to it.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of self-compassion in personal growth?
And yet there we are sitting on the couch.
Afraid to make a move.
Yes.
Like absolutely afraid to make a move because, well, for me, I'd been saying no so long at a certain point, I didn't even know how to say yes. It felt like uncrazy. It felt unfathomable that I would suddenly just say yes to something and leave the house. And I think for other people, that's true in many ways. Like you said, download the application to nursing school.
I think there's so many people who are like, I wish I could be this or I wish I could do this, but I can't.
Yes.
And they don't have a reason why they can't. Yes. The same reason why I don't have a reason why I couldn't go to a dinner party. You just don't have it in you. Yes. And the reality was you do.
So what happened? Like, you know, like what was it? It starts with your sister, but like put us at the scene.
So my oldest sister is 12 years older than me and kind of like almost a second mom. And she's cooking Thanksgiving dinner and she's doing it at my house because we're going to host the family.
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Chapter 8: How can embracing discomfort lead to personal empowerment?
I knew that it wasn't supposed to be this. I tell a story in the book where I talk about, I was, I became a member of the board of the Kennedy Center back in the Obama administration. And I arrived for like the first big event. And they informed me that I was sitting with the president, the first lady who I'd never met.
And I remember panicking on all levels and then going and having an amazing time and then realizing if they had asked me, not told me, but if they'd asked me if I'd wanted to sit with the president and first lady, I would have absolutely said no. Like the panic, the stress of the idea would have been too great for me to actually say yes for myself.
I only did it because they said that was what was happening and I couldn't really say no to that.
Like you're walking now.
Like there they are, we're going. Yeah, this is what's happening. And I realized that I would have missed out on this sort of once in a lifetime, insanely amazing event because I was too scared to say yes to stuff. It really struck me as I am harming myself. What's the very first yes you said yes to? The very first yes I said yes to was speaking at our alma mater.
They called me and asked me to give a commencement speech at Dartmouth College. And you're a 90, I'm a 91. And I said, yes, I would do it. And I only said yes because I had just made this rule for myself. And tell the person listening, what is the rule? The rule was, is that I was going to say yes to everything that scared me for one year.
And that seemed very terrifying, but it was also six months away. So I could say yes to it and sort of put it in a closet and say, I said yes to something.
Okay. And then things started to happen though, because you said yes to that. So the anxiety and the terror and all that stuff is down the road. So you're like, okay, I'm keeping my promise to myself.
And then I'm starting, they start to ask me other things like, Jimmy Kimmel wanted me to do a live tape, a live episode with them. And I just, that sounded insane to me. There's no reason I should be on television for any reason. I was really traumatized by the idea that I would do this, but I finally said yes. And they did it. They taped it. So it was not live, live. It was taped.
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