Moment 58 - How To Improve your Life in 5 Seconds: Mel Robbins

00:02this five second rule um you released the book i think 2017 called the five second rule and it's all about you know well you tell me what it's about where it came from i know there was a rocket you're watching a rocket on tv um and that was a little bit of the initial inspiration but where did this come from and what is it well so you know i i think i alluded to earlier that it seems like my version of personal development requires me to fall into a hole or dig one.

00:30And then I realized nobody's coming to rescue me. And I'm, if I want to get out of the hole, I'm going to need to build a fricking ladder. And so at the age of 40, I found myself in a place that I just never envisioned I would be. And that is I had, my husband and I had three kids under the age of 10 and I was unemployed and my husband had been in the restaurant business with his best friend and the housing crisis hit, especially hit in the United States.

01:01And we found ourselves 800 grand in debt because we had secured the restaurant business like complete morons with our kids' college fund and our house and every credit card and the home equity line and the cars and everything. And that's great when your business is working. It's absolutely terrifying when it's not. And so I would wake up every morning, just pinned to the bed with anxiety. And I became somebody that I barely recognized. I was screaming at Chris. I was drinking myself into the ground. I, the kids were missing the bus every day. I didn't have a job. I was hiding from my friends. I hadn't told my family what was going on. And, you know, the thing that's, that's interesting about being stuck in life is that the fact is, you know what you need to do.

01:52That's the easy part. And if you don't know what you need to do to improve the situation in, Google it. There's approximately a bazillion videos out there of people like you that have been in the exact same situation. They will walk you through how to, there are books you can buy, there are courses. The what you need to do is out there. It's the how. How the fuck do you make yourself do what you need to do when you are scared or overwhelmed or anxious or hopeless or depressed or any of the stuff that happens to you as a human?

02:28That's the $100 million question. And at the time, I didn't have the answer. I knew I needed to look for a job. I knew I needed to stop streaming at Chris. I knew I needed to get the kids on the bus. I knew I needed to ask for help. I wasn't doing any of those things. I was stuck in broken patterns and I didn't know any of the things that we're talking about right now. But one night, you know, I was sitting there and I was watching TV and I was telling myself, tomorrow morning, it's gotta be the new you.

02:55I was giving myself that lame pep talk. Like, Mel, you've gotta stop drinking. You have gotta be nice to Chris. You've got to pull your shit together. You gotta look for a job. And by God, woman, when that alarm rings, you cannot lay there like a human pot roast marinating in fear and staring at the ceiling. You have got to get out of bed, woman. And then all of a sudden, this is divine intervention. The rocket ship launches across the television screen, Stephen, and I say, that's it.

03:19That's it. Tomorrow morning, when the alarm goes off, Mel Robbins, you're going to launch yourself out of bed like a rocket ship. You're going to move so fast, you're not going to be in that bed when that anxiety hits. Now, it was either God or Bourbon. One of those two things gave me the idea, because it sounds dumb. Okay, Mal, you're going to beat anxiety by moving fast. That sounds great. Well, the very next morning, it was a Tuesday in February outside of Boston, Massachusetts in 2008.

03:48The alarm went off. And I think a lot about this moment because if I hadn't done what I did that morning, my life would have gone in a totally different direction. I'd probably be divorced I'd probably be an alcoholic my family would be torn apart no idea what I'd be doing for a living or where I would be and I profoundly believe that you are one decision away from a different life and that happened to me on a February morning in 2008 the alarm rang and And as soon as the alarm rang, I remembered the idea of launching myself out of bed.

04:39And then I did what psychologists call a bias toward thinking. And this window opens up when you start to think about what you need to do instead of doing what you need to do. It's this window of hesitation that's about five seconds long. A window of hesitation that defines your whole life. inside this window of hesitation lives anxiety and procrastination and fear and imposter syndrome and overwhelm all patterns of thinking all patterns of feeling all patterns of behavior that get triggered in this five second window of thinking about what you need to do because it's in the thinking that you go from being present to all the patterns kicking in and the coping mechanisms that you have. And so for whatever reason, I started to think about getting up and all the shit started to come in. I don't feel like it. How's it going to help? I don't want to.

05:35For whatever reason, I just started counting backwards. Five, four, three, two, one. And I stood up and I used it the next morning and the next morning. And by the third morning, I was kind of freaked out because I'm like, okay, this is working. This is weird. And I said, Mel, I made myself a promise. If at any moment, you know what you need to do, but you don't feel like it, just count backwards and let's just see what happens. And so I started using it, Steve, in this little count backwards technique, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

06:19No idea why it's working, by the way. In any moment, I'd see Chris, I'd want to kill him. Five, four, three, two, one. All of a sudden, I'm calm. I can speak to him from a more supportive place. Kids are irritating. Five, four, three, two, one. Take a breath. And now I can be the mom that I know I want to be. Five, four, three, two, one. I'm going out the door to exercise. Five, four, three, two, one. I'm picking up the phone and I'm networking.

06:40Five, four, three, two, one. I'm picking up the phone and calling my parents and asking for help. And slowly but surely, one decision at a time, using the five-second rule. And the five-second rule is very simple. The moment you have an instinct to move, you got to do it within five seconds or your brain will kill it. And counting backwards is critical. I now know why it works. When you count backwards, five, four, three, two, one, you interrupt habit loops stored in your basal ganglia.

07:06And the counting backwards requires focus so it awakens this sucker right here, your prefrontal cortex. It's referred to as a starting ritual in habit research. a cheat code for your brain. And basically I used it in secret for three years because I mean, what am I going to do? Tell people you can count to five and you change your life? I mean, it sounds ridiculous. Plus I was just trying to survive. I'm trying to like find a job and save my marriage and help my husband and make sure my kids are okay and start to pay our bills and make the ends meet.

07:42And that's what I was doing. And one thing led to another. and word got out about it and people started to write to me about it. And it has now gone on to change the lives of millions of people. We know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from attempting suicide by counting backwards, five, four, three, two, one. When I had a daytime talk show, an entire wing of nurses from an inpatient unit at a psychiatric hospital in Philadelphia came to my talk show and explained to me after the show that of all the tools that they have when they discharge somebody from an inpatient commitment that the five second rule is the most effective thing that they have except for medication obviously but it's the most effective thing that they have because it's simple and you can remember it and anybody can use it and it works and I think we make a huge mistake in life we make the mistake of believing that because our problems are big or because our dreams are so big that somehow the solution to achieving those dreams or to solving those problems must be enormous too when in truth it's the opposite the larger the problem the smaller the solution the bigger the dream the smaller the actions are that you need to start taking