The Imprint Phenomenon

I have just finished writing my second book.

I often have waves of emotion wash over me when I write. It’s not rare for a tear to run down my cheeks.

I think it’s because I get caught up in the words as well as the intent behind my words and the feelings I hope that they elicit in the reader.

This is the closing part of the last chapter. I hope you like it

There are many reasons why the 5 second secret works so effectively and one of the main reasons is that it activates the prefrontal cortex. Its main function is to help people set and achieves goals and it receives input from multiple areas of the brain.

It contributes to a variety of executive functions such as our ability to focus our attention on the task at hand. It helps us to predict the consequences of our actions and anticipate what is happening around us. It also helps us manage our emotional reactions and is significantly involved in helping us plan our future. So, it is not hard to see just how significant the 5 second secret in helping us make significant changes in our lives.

By activating the prefrontal cortex it activates a significant number of actions and creates a chain of powerful brain functions that assist us in ways that we would never have otherwise contemplated.

If I was to tell you about the prefrontal cortex in isolation and then give you a list of things that it can do and how to activate them in the pursual of your dreams your eyes would glaze over and the list would be slipped into a drawer with the intention of getting it out another day.

But by simply using the power of the 5 second secret you activate all these functions without having to consider each one individually. It actually makes achievement easier by removing the barriers that just randomly appear every time we get a great idea and get caught up in overthinking before our minds are consumed by doubt and past failures that ultimately cause us to talk ourselves out of taking action and thus denying us of the great things we could achieve if only we had the courage to act.

That is also part of the problem as we tend to underestimate just how courageous we are or can be. We do this because we all hold pictures in our minds that represent how we feel about things such as courage. If I asked you to give me an example of courage you would in all likelihood produce a long list of heroic acts that are representative of what you consider heroic.

For some, it may be watching people racing at over two hundred miles an hour in a formula one race. You might say it's anyone who dares to get in the ring in the hope of claiming the world heavyweight boxing crown. You might even say it's storming a house with dangerous terrorists inside. If you did you’d be right on all counts but we tend to disregard the acts of everyday courage that we see around us each and every day especially the acts of courage that we may personally embark on every day.

Asking your boss for a pay rise is a courageous act. Standing up to a bully at school or deciding to sell your house and emigrate to a country on the other side of the world is also extremely courageous.

Leaving the perceived security of your job and investing every last penny in a new business venture is also a highly courageous act. Deciding that cancer isn’t going to defeat you and getting out of bed determined to live is also an act of great courage, but we often downplay our own acts of courage or even dismiss them altogether.

However, that doesn’t diminish them in the slightest. You are brave and you have been brave on countless occasions, you just don’t see it that way. Why? Because you felt afraid, and because you felt fearful you didn’t consider yourself courageous. But I really need you to hear this because it will help you come to realise just how brave and courageous you really are!

Everyone is afraid. Courage isn’t the absence of fear it is the ability to act in spite of fear. When you stop and consider that just for one moment what can be more courageous than attempting something even though you are terrified to the core of your being.

It takes courage to act and the five second secret is a powerful way to facilitate the ability to move through fear and set yourself on the path to action despite fear.

When we act, it forces our brain to focus on the present moment. This was the key factor that I came to realise as I sat on the starting line of that dirt bike race way back in 1977. I couldn’t have been more scared in that moment. As our group of twelve year old would be world champions sat on the starting line. We were held up as we had to wait until the stretchers that were carrying off two people whose broken bones had prevented them from walking away.

My mind was also consumed with the vivid picture in my mind of someone who had crashed in practice and the vision of the jammed throttle as the back wheel of the bike that span around at high speed as it punched at his head as it tried to suck his head into the back wheel with the deafening sound of the engine just added to the drama.

I had thrown up behind a bush only ten minutes before and this had all happened on my first ever day of racing. I felt dazed by the fear. I wanted to quit. I looked across at my father and his steely glare silently shouted at me “win or else” I just wanted to ground to swallow me up and never spit me out again. But then something changed. The 5 second board appeared and the abject terror I was feeling left me in an instant.

The fear didn’t just subside in me. It left me altogether. The moment the 5 second board appeared it demanded both my focus and commitment and it got it. I was in the moment. I was focusing on the task at hand and I was ready to act. I glanced forward towards my goal which was to be the first to the corner. I looked to my left and right and noticed the determination of the other boys who had varying degrees of fear coursing through their veins.

I looked forward. I put my weight over the front of the bike to keep the front wheel down. I heard the gear clunk as I pulled in the clutch and pressed down with my left foot. I wound open the throttle, dropped the clutch and hurtled down the straight so fast that everything around me was just a blur and it all happened in just 5 seconds.

I have come to realise that whatever you want wants you. I used to think that it was just another motivational speakers’ cliché, but it isn’t. I never used to understand what it meant but then one day because of the 5 second secret it became clear.

We don’t fail to achieve our dreams because they are beyond our reach. We fail to achieve our dreams because we failed to act. We allowed fear to paralyse us. We let the memories of past failures define us and instead of seeing failure as an event we saw ourselves as the failure.

Because we thought too much what seemed to be the best idea we ever had and which could have so easily been the one thing that would change our life forever became nothing more than a feeling of disappointment as a sombre dose of reality greeted us upon wakening. We were consumed with thoughts of embarrassment as we blushed at our own stupidity thinking that we could change our world if not the world itself.

But nothing had changed in reality apart from the time that we had allowed to elapse in between the stimulus and our response or lack of it. The inevitable truth was we didn’t act when we had a great idea and our mind consequently did what they always did. It killed our dream.

So, my parting question to you is simply this.

What are you going to do now? Your life is calling you but are you going to hear the call and even more importantly act on that call?

There isn’t much that you could hope to achieve that hasn’t already been achieved by someone else, so why not you.

I did and trust me I am not anything special. I am the same flawed human being that you are. I have the same fears. The same regrets and for the most part the same challenges. But that isn’t a reason to give up or give in, it’s just a reason to fight harder even harder for your dreams.

My wife has always said to me “No one is coming” She meant that no one is coming to save us or do it for us. If we want something its up to us. We will enlist the help of others along the way and no one does it alone. But without our ability to act nothing will ever change.

You are better than that, we all are, and life really is too short to be little.

As I alluded to earlier in this book. The truth joy of achievement lies in the overcoming of obstacles.

I wish I would have learned that much sooner than I did. But its never too late and the best time to begin has always been the moment that you are currently in.

It always was!