Do You Have 5 Seconds?
“You’ve always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.” Glinda, The Wizard of Oz
If you have five seconds, you can change your life! A book I read a few years ago finally put the missing pieces to my personal puzzle together when I struggled with a self-limiting belief system (I didn’t even know what that was at the time), negative thoughts and just dealing with a lot of “stuff.”
The book is “The 5 Second Rule” by Mel Robbins. Mel and her husband Christopher had it all, but then life fell apart in their finances, marriage, careers and self-esteem. The turnaround happened when Mel saw on TV an image of a rocket launching….5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … LIFT OFF. That image got her out of bed each morning…. alarm went off, she started counting 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… “get out of bed.” She kept applying this day after day…. progress started to happen….and the heaviness of life was starting to lift.
“I finally realized I was one decision away from a different life, a different mindset, and a different future,” Stephanie Ritter Maat
The 5 Second Rule: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … ACTION!
We all have 5 seconds…many times throughout the day. Those 5 seconds are opportunities for you to interrupt a negative thought and bolster up your confidence to take a FORWARD step personally and/or professionally.
Counting backwards does a few important things simultaneously: it distracts you from your worries, it focuses your attention on what you need to do, it prompts you to act, and it interrupts the habits of hesitating, over thinking, and holding back. The 5 second rule rewires your brain and forms new neurological pathways.
When you are overcoming a personal challenge, feeling the fear of public speaking, or lacking confidence to speak up, start saying (out loud if you can) …5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and name your action step “I will do….” You will interrupt the negative thought pattern that is discouraging you…. so you can act NOW and MOVE forward. If you counted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., it would be tempting to keep counting! So, start turning off that negative tape player in your head by utilizing the 5 second rule.
For example, if you have to make an important sales call and you are nervous about how it will go, and your confidence is being challenged…. do the 5 second rule and then say “when I get to 1, I will pick up the phone, speak with confidence and get the deal done.”
5 Second Rule Cheat Sheet
5 Stop the Hesitation – 5 seconds to act
4 Stop Thinking and Start Acting
3 Momentum Keeps You Moving – count backwards and move
2 Flex Your Brain Muscle – rewire your brain/form new neurological pathways
1 5- 4 - 3- 2- 1… Let’s GO!
Taken from “The 5 Second Rule” book by Mel Robbins
Dr. Brené Brown “You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort, but you cannot have both.”
Why Is It So Hard To Take The First Step?
Have you ever had to push a stalled car to get it off the road? At first it takes all of your strength to get the wheels moving, but once it starts moving, it is easier to keep pushing. It is called activation energy. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi applied this to human behavior. He defines activation energy as that “initial huge push of energy that’s required to change.” That is why the 5 second rule works because when you get to 1 you move…but it may feel like you are pushing that stalled car, but the more you do this, the energy will get behind you and keep you moving forward …which leads to results!
Tony Robbins has some great advice, too. Just like with any goal or action step you want to take, Tony Robbins says to NOT go to the “HOW” first. He says to “not get hung up with the HOW” because it will ruin your drive and discourage you. As you start applying the 5 second rule, don’t worry about HOW you will move or HOW will this work out or HOW you will accomplish something…just do it.
Your 5 Seconds Can Positively Impact Others
Rosa Parks made a decision decades ago on a chilly December evening in 1955 when she quietly refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Mrs. Parks described herself as the kind of person who tried to “be as careful as possible to stay out of trouble.” All she wanted to do that evening was to go home and have dinner with her husband. However, her life was interrupted with what we can call “a 5 second decision.” Weeks after her arrest she was interviewed about that night and she said, “the time has just come that I had been pushed as far as I stand to be pushed, I suppose.” She did not plan it and agreed that “it just sort of happened.”
Four days later in the same city another “suddenly” decision was being made. The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed in response to Mrs. Park’s arrest. A young black preacher was voted by his peers to lead the 381-day busy boycott. This preacher later said, “it happened so quickly that I did not have time to think it through. It is probable that if I had, I would have declined the nomination.” This preacher was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
These are just two examples of millions on why it is important to move past hesitation. When we hesitate, our brain goes into protection mode, it senses fear or danger and puts a halt to our actions. The brain means well. However, think about how many “in the moment” opportunities you have missed because of it? You are not always going to know the next steps; you may be so nervous to take the next step…. interrupt those thoughts with YOUR life-changing 5 second rule and MOVE.
“COURAGE IS FOUND IN UNLIKELY PLACES.” –J.R.R. Tolkien
