5 SECOND RULE
As a real estate agent for Compass, we are invited to annual retreats. This past year, the keynote speaker was Mel Robbins. Now that I have listened her speak and know who she is, I am aware that she is a huge motivational author and has a super successful podcast, but I hadn’t heard of her beforehand.
She’s an excellent speaker, very down to earth and relatable. Her path has led her to become this mega star in the self-help world yet her story really isn’t such an uncommon one (at least leading up to the part where she becomes rich & famous). To be honest, her tools which have gained her notoriety are fairly common concepts, as well.
What I walked away with was this technique that she has used in her own life and now shares with millions of others. It’s called the Five Second Rule and it’s a technique in which she counts down from five to motivate her to do some thing she doesn’t want to do.
For example, if she wakes up in the morning and doesn’t feel like getting out of bed. She’ll start at five and say out loud: ‘5-4-3-2-1…’ and when she gets to ‘one’ something clicks and pushes her to make a move.
Evidently something in your brain urges you to make a move when you get to ‘one’. She spoke about the prefrontal cortex and how it has an effect with this countdown method — Emphasizing that counting up from 1 to 5 would not have the same effect.
Anyway, in short, I have attempted to use this here and there since this retreat and survey says that there’s a success rate there. I’m not sure what the success rate is for me, but it’s kind of blossomed into this other rule of five for me. And, to me, that is worth sharing.
Now, this counting backwards from five has helped me get my butt out of bed a couple times, it has help me start working out a couple times, but it’s mostly encouraged me to start applying it in other ways.
I will see a huge pile of laundry that needs to be filed folded in my room. I tell myself to go fold five pieces and then you can come back and do what you were doing. That is not overwhelming. I can do that.
If I do that a couple times throughout the day, then the majority of the pile is folded, and I can handle the rest. I know this blog post is not going to apply to all of its readers, but I do think there are people out there that look at laundry, piles and get overwhelmed. I can’t just be me.
I can apply it to my job because I can do five emails and not have to go through my entire inbox in one sitting. I can apply it throughout the day because I can take five quick things off of my to-do list, bang those out, and then relax for a minute before I have to tackle another task.
Essentially, it’s compartmentalizing and it’s helped me a few times here and there. So I thought I would share.
Sidenote: I recently found out that Mel Robbins hangs around the Mystic area. Apparently she likes to work out in Westerly and hangs at the Weekapaug Inn.
I haven’t seen her, but I am not great at recognizing people out of their element. If you see her, maybe you can ‘5-4-3-2-1…’ and get the courage to go up to her and say hello.
