Episode 37 - Review and Summary of 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins

We all have our own goals in life. What stands in our way is that we hesitate and before long, we’ve talked or thought ourselves away from taking action.

This powerful book by best-selling author and motivation expert Mel Robbins shows us How to enrich our lives and destroy doubt in just 5 seconds. This book was inspired by her TEDx talk that More than 8 million people have watched, and executives from the world’s top brands are using the tool to increase productivity, collaboration, and engagement.

Mel shares a powerful quote in the book by GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

It says.

“The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them. “ end quote

In life, we can all agree that we only do the things we feel like doing. And not necessarily the things we need to do.

Ever remember a time when you are driving and then all of a sudden, we get to our destination, without us remembering how we got there. Pretty scary right? but it does happen. Our brains are so powerful that it can run on autopilot through routines, which we learned about the power of Habit by Charles Duhigg in an earlier podcast.

Throughout our day, because of the habits we have made, we go through life on autopilot. But sometimes, our auto mode is exactly what stops us from doing the things we need to do to achieve the success we want.

We need to hack our brains to recognize this and act before our own brain gets into auto pilot.

How long does it take to make a change? Changes happen in micro-moments

Our brain is so powerful, it is our #1 bodyguard, it is there to protect us from danger.

Mel says that the physical manifestation of fear and excitement are the same, our hands get clammy, we get butterflies in our stomach, we start to sweat.

Such as when we have a near miss accident, our fight or flight response kicks in and we feel rattled. But our brains know and can recognize that the danger has passed because the car that almost hit us, is moving away, so we calm down.

This is because our brain searches for context. That's why our minds races to find this. If we don’t act when an instinct to do something we don't normally do or fear exists, after 5 seconds we already have a whole reason to not do it, because our brains are trying to protect us from getting hurt.

In our lives, we’ve had had our parents, coaches, teachers, friends, and mentors who push us to be better than our excuses and bigger than our fears.

The secret to having the confidence and courage to change our lives and work is simply knowing how to push ourselves.

Mel says in her book. “In all of modern history, no single invention has so perfectly captured the perverse power of the mind to defeat its own best intentions as the snooze button.”

We have become so wired to snooze our alarm and in turn our lives.

Mel shares that “Hesitation is the kiss of death. You might hesitate for a just nanosecond, but that’s all it takes. That one small hesitation triggers a mental system that’s designed to stop you. And it happens in less than—you guessed it—five seconds.”

Allow me to leave you with this final thought.

As parents, leaders and entrepreneurs we need the language of the mind and the language of the soul as Mel calls them to succeed.

The language of the mind consist of the bookings, sales, analytics, product development and planning etc.

The language of the soul is for your dreams, relationships, curiousity, innovation and inspiration.

Great leaders do both. That is where we can apply the 5 second rule to turn things on.

Don’t let the simplicity of this method fool you. Its a mental model that will push us to stop procrastinating on our dreams.

We are all 5 second away from changing our life.

5 4 3 2 1 GO. Change your life today.