Takeaway-A.16-THE 5 SECOND RULE

The Five Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage by Mel Robbins is the book that shares useful tool that will help you push yourself when you face moments that are difficult, uncertain and scary; discover the courage to become your greatest self; become more influential at work, be more productive, step outside your comfort zone, become more efficient at networking, self-monitor and control your emotions; manage, engage, motivate and encourage team members in your everyday life. The book makes us feel that courage isn't something only heroes possess but something we can all easily access inside of ourselves. Courage is precisely what the 5 Second Rule gives you.

The key takeaways of the book are:

1. The 5 second rule: The moment you have an instinct to act on a goal you must count 5-4-3-2-1 and physically move or your brain will stop you. Start by counting backwards to yourself: 5- 4- 3- 2- 1. As soon as you reach “1,” move. That’s it. Anytime there’s something you know you should do, but you feel uncertain, afraid, or overwhelmed…just take control by counting backwards 5- 4- 3- 2- 1. That’ll quiet your mind. Then, move when you get to 1.

Every day brings a lot of opportunities to influence your life and if you always take action within 5 seconds on such instincts, you will feel great amounts of confidence as you are now taking control of your life that helps you achieve great things. It is, because, when you count backward, it distracts your mind from the excuses, worries, fears, thoughts etc. and focuses it on moving in the new direction. When you physically move instead of stopping to think, your physiology changes and your mind falls in line.

2. What can you use 5 second Rule for? : You can use the 5 second rule to change your behavior-to push yourself to create new habits, pull yourself away from destructive habits, and master the skills of self-monitoring and self-control. You can also use it to act with everyday courage-to discover the courage you need to do things that are new, scary or uncertain. The Rule will quiet your self-doubt and build confidence as you push yourself to pursue your passions. This can also be used to control your mind from negative thoughts and endless anxiety, worries and fear that tends to drag you down.

3. What are you waiting for? Sometimes there is no next time, no second chance, or no time out. Stop waiting. It’s now or never. When you wait, you aren’t procrastinating. You are doing something more dangerous. You are deliberately convincing yourself “now is not the time.” You are actively working against your dreams. When you make excuses and talk yourself into waiting, you are limiting your ability to make your dreams come true.

4. How to start the 5 second Rule-Wake-up challenge: A great way to start using the 5 second rule is to set your alarm for early morning 30 minutes earlier than usual, and the moment it rings count 5- 4- 3- 2- 1 to push yourself out of bed and turn off the alarm. If you fail, it’s because you made a decision to blow off the 5 Second Rule. If you can change your morning routine, you can change everything. Change requires you to act deliberately despite how you feel. If you can master that in one area of your life, you can do it in any area that you are trying to improve.

5. Motivation: Depending on motivation will not get you far as it varies greatly from moment to moment. Use it to instill the 5 second habit which will, in turn, get you moving even when you don’t feel like it. The rule doesn’t make these things easy but it makes them happen. That’s why, it's described as a tool. The 5 Second Rule is so empowering that it strengthens your belief that you do have the ability to control your own fate because you are proving it to yourself one push at a time.

6. What do you feel about it? We believe that we use logic or consider our goals when we make decisions but that’s not the case. According to neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, it’s our feelings that decide for us 95% of the time. You feel before you think. You feel before you act. And that’s how you ultimately make decisions—based on how you feel. Every time we have a decision to make, we subconsciously tally all the pros and cons of our choices and then make a gut call, based on how we feel. This happens in a nanosecond. That’s why none of us catches it. How you feel in the moment is almost never aligned with your goals and your dreams. If you only act when you feel like it, you will never get what you want. You must learn how to separate what you feel from the actions that you take. If you don’t feel like attacking to do list on your desk, you won’t but 5- 4- 3- 2- 1-GO, and you can force yourself to start working on it. You can't control how you feel, but you can control how you act.

7. Goals: Whenever you are clear about what you want to achieve in life, you are setting a program for your subconscious, which help you to get closer to realizing your dream. So, you need to learn to induce your goal related impulses and instincts as it guides you. The difference between people who make their dreams come true and those who don’t is just their courage to start and discipline to keep going. The Rule is a game-changer because it 5- 4- 3- 2- 1 forces you to get out of your head and start and it’ll 5- 4- 3- 2- 1 help you keep going. When you 5- 4- 3- 2- 1 push yourself forward you’ll discover the magic in your life and you open yourself up to the world, to opportunity, and to possibility. You might not get the girl, the part, or the response you wanted but that’s not the point. In the end, you’ll get something way cooler, you’ll discover the power inside of you. And now you know that all it takes is 5 seconds to take care of your courage.

8. Shining the light and Small moves: Shine a light on your own thoughts and pay attention to how many good ideas and instincts you have every day. They typically start with “I should”: I should exercise now, I should write daily, I should skip dessert etc. Notice how you’re putting off such ideas and saying “later” instead of “now”. In response to them, you are supposed to just do it right now. With one tiny action, you take this instinct and put it in the world where it becomes real. You can also use the rule to break free of a negative thought loop.

It’s not the big moves that define our lives; it’s the smallest ones. Within five seconds of stopping to think, you’ll have decided not to take any action on those small things. Over time, those small decisions build. We’ve repeated this pattern of hesitating, worrying and doubting ourselves so much that these actions are now habits that have encoded in our brains. The fact that hesitating, holding yourself back and overthinking are habits is good news. There’s a simple, proven way to break or replace bad habits and the 5 Second Rule is the easiest way to do it.

9. The importance of taking action right away: Pushing yourself to take simple steps of moving your life forward creates a positive chain reaction in your confidence, productivity, momentum, sense of freedom and power that’s hard to accurately describe. Our lives are made out of choices that we make on a daily basis. Most of them are done subconsciously as a part of your routine, that’s being reactive. You should instead take a proactive role and act on your good instincts. That is being true to yourself, to your heart and destiny.

10. Don’t settle for being fine: Whenever you give up on yourself and settle for being fine, you are creating a loop of not taking action. Get out of your head and believe that you have ideas that can change your life and change the world you’re just one step away from getting closer to achieving it. Get specific about your motivation.

11. Courage and confidence: Courage is the ability to do something that is difficult and scary, sharing your ideas, showing up, speaking up, standing behind your beliefs, stepping out of your comfort zone, getting out of bed. Every time you take one tiny step, one action on your instincts and acts of courage everyday, you will build your confidence and you will feel in control of your life. Confidence is not a personality trait, it is a skill. You create it by the small things you do every single day courageously that build trust in yourself. Speak up in meetings, sign up for something you wouldn't usually. Small things are not small at all. They are the most important things of all. And they add up. Pushing yourself to 5- 4- 3- 2- 1 on the “small things” gives you confidence to do the “big scheme of things.

12. Productivity and Procrastination: Productivity is influenced by our focus and there are two types of focus you need to master for being productive. Firstly, you need to have the ability to manage distractions so that you can focus moment to moment on the task at hand. You need to decide that distractions aren’t good and should have guts to keep aside every things that tend distract you like mobile, thoughts, push notifications etc. Secondly, you need to have skill of focusing on what’s truly important to you in the big picture so that you don’t waste your day on unnecessary and stupid stuff. For this, create a morning routine that helps you focus on your priorities. Customize it to your needs, include some planning time for the day ahead. Add exercise or meditation. Create a routine that you can do every single day.

Procrastination is a behavior pattern which you use to cope with stress. Productive procrastination is not the problem. If you are working on a creative or innovative project, research shows that procrastination is not only good, but it is also important. The creative process takes time, so when you set a project aside for a few days or weeks, your mind can wander. Destructive procrastination is when we avoid the work we need to get done and know there will be negative consequences. If procrastinating is a habit, you have to replace the bad behavior pattern (avoidance) with a new positive one (getting started). The moment you feel yourself hesitate, doing easier tasks, or avoiding hard work, use the Rule, 5- 4- 3- 2- 1 push yourself to start the important thing you need to do. When you assert yourself and just get started, you are taking control of the moment and your life. So, next time whenever you start procrastinating, ask yourself what are you procrastinating from and challenge your feelings and exit away from how you feel. For example: If you’re putting off making 20 phone calls to your potential clients, face yourself and ask why is it more important to check your notification in facebook right now than attempting the thing that will bring you closer to your target. Once you had that conversation with yourself and catch yourself procrastinating on the same thing again, just say 5-4-3-2-1 and push yourself to start doing it. The key is not in finishing particular tasks/targets/project, but taking the first step.

13. Stop worrying: One of the most important habits to conquer is the habit of worry.  Worrying is a default setting that your mind goes to when you aren’t paying attention. The key is catching yourself when you drift into worry and then regaining mental control by using the Rule. When your mind takes you somewhere sad, dark, doubtful, or negative, you don’t have to go with it. Start by asking yourself; “what am I grateful for in this moment? What do I want to remember?” When you ask that simple question, you impact your brain at a biological level. In order to respond you have to take stock of your life, relationships and work and search for an answer in the moment. It forces you to focus on the positive aspects of your life. As soon as you think about what you are grateful for, you’ll start feeling grateful instead of worried. So, next time whenever you feel really worried before a meeting, rewire yourself to feel excited about the meeting-resolving something important than worrying about things going wrong.

14. End Anxiety:  Anxiety is what happens when your habit of worrying spirals out of control. The key to overcoming anxiety is understanding it. If you can catch it right as it kicks in and reframe it, you’ll stabilize your thoughts before your mind escalates it into panicking situation. And over time, as you use the 5 Second Rule to assert control over your mind and then reframing the anxiety as excitement so that your brain doesn’t escalate it and your body can calm down over and over, your anxiety will weaken and become what it started out as simple worries. As you just learned, the habit of worry is easy to break.

15. Pursing Passion: Use the 5 Second Rule to say 5- 4- 3- 2- 1 and push yourself to start exploring and lean into opportunities as they appear. Start exploring your curiosity. Your curiosity is how your instincts get you to pay attention to what your heart really cares about. If you can’t stop thinking something, make something your new hobby. Also pay close attention to envy. If you find yourself jealous of someone else, explore that feeling. What aspect of their life are you jealous of? This may give you a clue into what you really want for yourself. Push yourself to take simple steps to explore that subject: read about it, watch video tutorials, talk to people, take a class and write a plan. You’ll be surprised by what happens over time.

16. Build momentum: It will start as just an instinct. It always does. First you take a class. A class leads to a certification. A certification leads to conversations. Conversations lead to opportunities. Small opportunities lead to larger ones. Maybe you’ll want to share something what you’re learning with people at work, so you use the Rule push yourself to do it. That’s when momentum kicks in.

17. The courage to commit: There’s no magic formula for when to pull the trigger and turn a passion project into a passion-driven career or major life change. It requires planning and some slow, deep thinking. If you are anything like the rest of us, you’ll torture yourself for a while until you can’t stand straddling your present life and the future one. You need to ask yourself the Heart First question, “Am I ready to commit to this?” Instead of the Feeling First question, “Do I feel ready to commit to this?” You’ll never feel ready. The moment you answer yes to the question “Am I ready to commit to this?” you’ll need to use the Rule to give yourself that final push. Even when you are ready, it’s not going to feel good when you do it.

18. What will get you closer to your goals? Ask yourself that question now saying 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and start doing it.

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Disclaimer: Takeaway is the series of article in which I am making humble effort to offer actionable interpretations, perspectives and agendas from worthy books by some of the eminent authors and thought leaders. The views expressed herein is just the personal perspective of writer and doesn’t reflect opinion of whatsoever organization he is currently engaged with.