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“What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?”

In 1954, psychologist Julian Rotter coined a concept known as the locus of control. It explains the feeling people perceive of outside forces controlling their lives, and that those who feel more in control tend to be more productive.

We’re often told to keep an eye out for opportunities and to take them when they appear. But the better advice is to assert control over your own destiny and create opportunities yourself. Mel Robbins calls this "the power of the push" and the five-second rule might just be the push you need.

On a cold December night, in 1955, Rosa Parks was sitting on a city bus and refused to stand up and give her seat to a white man. This relatively small act of defiance was nevertheless a historic moment of great courage in the fight for civil rights; it shows us that it doesn’t necessarily take grand gestures to spark significant change.

Four days after Parks was arrested, people began to organize a boycott of segregated buses, and they wanted a 26-year-old preacher to be the voice of their protest. This preacher would later write: “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.” That preacher’s name was Martin Luther King, Jr.

Parks and King didn’t consider themselves courageous people in their everyday lives, so their instincts weren’t to fight against injustice. Yet that’s what they did. They both encountered a moment when their instincts collided with their beliefs and goals and they felt the power of the push.

Most of us have instincts that tell us to play it safe and not be courageous. But the five-second rule can give us just enough time to move in the direction that can open us up to life’s opportunities.

Each day presents a chance to move toward greatness or stick with a safe and mundane routine. If you want to live an exceptional life, you’ll have to make the choice of taking five seconds to push yourself out of your comfort zone.

There’s no reason to see the great people throughout history as any different than yourself. Rosa Parks was a shy and introverted woman and Dr. King struggled with self-doubt. They just pushed past these fears, and you can, too.

No one dreams of being a person who didn’t do anything. But we tend to wait “for the right time” even though our perfect scenario may never arrive. According to a recent survey,

85 percent of professional service employees are keeping feedback from their managers because it isn’t the “right time.”

Even the most talented among us need a push to get on the right track.

Steve Wozniak, a cofounder of Apple, was plagued with uncertainty after he and Steve Jobs were offered funding to start their own business in 1977. Wozniak wanted to hold off for a while and worried about quitting his day job until his friends convinced him to take the leap.

Wozniak certainly reaped the rewards the world has to offer to those who stop playing the waiting game.

The author E.L. James didn’t wait for a lucrative publishing deal before writing the overwhelmingly popular Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. She was a working mother with a passion, and she created her own opportunity by self-publishing the book that she’d managed to write in her free time. Fifty Shades of Grey went on to sell a million copies in just four days, but it never would’ve happened if she hadn’t taken the initiative.

According to neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, our emotions are the deciding factor for 95 percent of our decisions. So rather than “thinking and acting,” we generally “feel and act.”

Part of Damasio’s research involved brain-damaged people who were unable to experience emotions. Even though they could list the pros and cons of any given choice, they were unable to make decisions.

Damasio’s work led him to believe that human beings aren’t “thinking machines that feel,” but rather “feeling machines that think.”

Experts used to think of all procrastination as being the result of bad time management and a lack of willpower or proper self-discipline. But it’s now understood that procrastination isn’t just laziness, but also a side effect of how we deal with stress.

According to Timothy Pychyl, a psychology professor at Carleton University,

procrastination is a result of our powerful subconscious desire for instant gratification. Since procrastination offers an immediate, albeit temporary, relief from the stress of life, we’re constantly drawn to it.

Since the best way to complete a task is to “just get started,” as Dr. Pychyl puts it, you’ll want to start the five-second rule the moment you start to sense the urge to procrastinate or do something else.

Once you begin to use it for this purpose, you’ll immediately begin improving your locus of control. After all, procrastination is just another way of giving up control. So, instead, start the countdown and reassert control over your life.

Dr. Karl Pillemer is a Cornell University professor who has spent over ten years discussing the meaning of life with more than 1,200 senior citizens. Through these conversations, one thing has become clear: most senior citizens believe they’ve wasted too much time worrying.

Life is far too precious a thing to spend living in fear and anxiety, so before you regret another minute, use the five-second rule to take control and live life to its fullest.

Pay attention to your mood, and when you feel your mind begin to give itself over to worry, take five seconds to peacefully count down from five so you can reassert control. As soon as you reach “one,” ask yourself these two questions: “What am I grateful for in this moment?” and “What do I want to remember?”

Answering these questions will help you shift your focus away from the worry and onto the more uplifting and positive aspects of life. Remember, there are truly important and precious parts of life, such as your relationships and the things you are working on, so use the five-second rule to remind yourself of the big picture. In any given moment, there are bound to be more things to be grateful for than to be anxious about.

Nothing is set in stone. Your habits, mind-set and personality traits are flexible and subject to change. Once you realize this, your life can start changing for the better. To help facilitate this change, use the five-second rule, a simple tool that can help you adjust your “default” reactions by counting down from five. By changing the way we make decisions, this relatively small act can add up to redefine who you are, how you feel and what you do with your life. [Adopted from The 5 Second Rule (2017) by Mel Robbins, & Blinkist]

Reframe your anxiety as excitement: Next time you’re feeling nervous about something, such as a job interview or speaking publicly, don’t tell yourself to “calm down.” Instead, say, “I’m excited!” Anxiety is a state of physiological arousal and you can flip it around to make it positive instead of letting the fear pull you in. When you tell yourself that you’re excited, it provides a valid positive alternative that allows you to stay in control.

The five-minute rule can help you achieve emotional peace when things go wrong.

When the author Hal Elrod was 20, he was involved in a near-fatal car crash after being hit head-on by a drunk driver going 70 miles an hour. What did the most damage, though, was being broadsided by a second vehicle. That collision broke eleven bones, including Elrod’s femur, eye socket and pelvis. His heart stopped for a full six minutes and he almost bled to death, leaving him in a coma.

When he woke, he was told he’d probably never walk again. His doctors expected him to fall into a profound depression. But after a moment of deep reflection, Elrod surprised them with his upbeat response. He laughed, cracked jokes and seemed to be in high spirits. That, the medical staff thought, must be a form of denial. Worried that he was repressing his emotions, they asked his parents to talk to him. That’s when the author explained the five-minute rule. 

That’s something he learned from his mentor Jesse Levine. By the time of the crash, Elrod had been applying it every day for nearly two years. Here’s how it works: it’s okay to feel bad when things go wrong, but not for more than five minutes. When you suffer a setback, you set a timer and do whatever you need to – scream, cry, kvetch or punch a wall. Then, when the time’s up, you say, “Can’t change it” aloud and move on.

The reason the rule is so effective is because it taps into a powerful truth: emotional pain isn’t caused by external events that are beyond our control, but by our responses. Wallowing, in other words, is a choice that keeps us trapped in experiences we’re powerless to alter. Letting go and accepting them, by contrast, lets us move on. In Elrod’s case, it meant he could fully focus on his recovery and, eventually, regain the use of his legs.

We can attract Miracles in our lives. One way of that happening to us is transforming our dreams into reality, and these are in our own hands. In fact, there’s a fail-safe method for generating miracles; the trick is knowing how. And that’s where the miracle equation comes in:

Unwavering faith plus extraordinary effort equals miracles. In everyday terms, that means learning to overcome inborn cognitive limits, embracing your true gifts and putting in the hours necessary to realize your desires and ambitions.

Make peace with your emotional pain: Take a moment to think about the things that cause you emotional pain. How much time and energy do you spend dwelling on them, and has it changed anything? One last question: Would your life be better if it didn’t contain the stress, anger and sadness associated with that pain? Well, let’s find out! Picture a source of your pain – the unchangeable circumstance that your mind wants to resist. Once you’ve got that image in your head, take a deep breath and focus your mind on consciously choosing to accept it unconditionally. If that doesn’t work right away, try again tomorrow – eventually, you’ll find that the pain will recede as you embrace its unalterable reality. [Adopted from the Blinkist version of The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod]

Gratitude to DearBUBU team.

[I love to explore, observe, learn & share what I find enlightening fascinating. My passion for learning things & exploring diverse fields is so much so that I often struggle to prioritize immediate gains(academic, social & economic) over my long term self-development. 

Mostly, the human brain & its potential fascinate me to an unimaginable extent. So I enjoy hacking our thought, behavior & action patterns, and learning about them. Besides, how the universe works as a super integrated system of millions of elements is something that keeps my brain often occupied. Every time I follow its work pattern, I learn something new that can be applied in other areas of our lives. Steady but constant growth fascinates me, consistency, pattern fascinates and the intellect fascinates me. 

This Seeker Seeks Sagacity is a series of adopted, findings based articles I would like to publish in the coming days. As a Seeker, I am always on a mission to learn something new and connect dots to uncover some mysteries of this universe. So sharing the key findings is just a part of my learning journey, but if anybody gets benefited from it, that would be an external reward for my journey towards the core of the knowledge world]