Ways to use the 5 second rule:
- To push yourself
- Become more influential at work
- Be more productive
- Step outside your comfort zone
- Become more efficient at networking
- To self-monitor and control your emotions
- To manage, engage, motivate, and encourage team members
Every single day we face moments that are difficult, uncertain, and scary. Your life requires courage. And that is exactly what the Rule will help you discover—the courage to become your greatest self.
Courage
Courage is the ability to do something that is difficult or scary. Stepping outside of your comfort zone. Sharing your ideas, speaking up, or showing up. Standing firm in your beliefs and values. And some days…getting out of bed.
Goals & dreams
When it comes to goals, dreams, and changing your life, your inner wisdom is a genius. Your goal-related impulses, urges, and instincts are there to guide you. You need to learn to bet on them. Because, as history proves, you’ll never know when your greatest inspiration will strike and where that discovery will lead you if you trust yourself enough to act on it.
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.”
For example: If you start to feel too tired to exercise, count 5- 4- 3- 2- 1 and push yourself out the door for a run. Don’t give yourself time to come up with any further excuses.
When you count backward, you mentally shift the gears in your mind.
You interrupt your default thinking and do what psychologists call “assert control.” The counting distracts you from your excuses and focuses your mind on moving in a new direction. When you physically move instead of stopping to think, your physiology changes and your mind falls in line.
The Rule is (in the language of habit research) a “starting ritual” that activates the prefrontal cortex, helping to change your behavior. The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that you use when you focus, change, or take deliberate actions.
Inspired by
Mel Robbins