Introduction
Can just 5 seconds really change your life? Speaker and author Mel Robbins says, “Absolutely can change, and can change so much that you may not have even imagined.” Do you want to pursue that career which is your passion? Do you want to improve health and relationships of your life ? Do you want to be confident and face your fears ? The 5 Second Rule will teach you how to get out of what is holding you back, how to stop hesitation and take action to finally live the life of your dreams. This simple technique will help you in giving a new shape to your habits and transform any aspect of your life. With Robbins as your guide, you will learn how a simple commitment can completely change your life.
Chapter 1
Sometimes in life, even the simplest or the smallest task seems to be very difficult. Even answering an email and going to the gym feels very overwhelming.
For Robbins, even getting out of bed after the alarm went off was a very challenging task. As soon as she wakes up, she only cares about all the problems happening to her like – bounced cheque, vacating notice put up by the bank on his house, her jobless, struggling as a wife and mother and her Drinking alcohol to ease the pain. Every day of her used to start as if everything in her life had turned into turmoil.
Robbins wanted to change his life but she could not understand how. One night, she saw an advertisement on TV. A typical 5-4-3-2-1 countdown of a rocket launch , was showing in it. Impressed by this, Robbins decided that she would get up from the bed like a rocket the next day. Although it sounded silly, but as soon as the alarm went off in the morning, Robbins started counting down to 5 and managed to get up from her bed. So this is how the idea of 5 second rule started.
Chapter 2
What You Can Expect When You Use It. When you feel the urge to score a goal, count backwards from 5 and move your body. By doing this the 5 second rule creates a result in your life that you can see, feel for yourself. Mel notices this and psychological research also says that there is a 5-second gap or window between your instinct to take an action and your brain trying to avoid it by making excuses. By applying this rule in your life, you will start taking action to achieve your goal by leaving the bet on this pretext.
This 5 second window, comes again and again throughout your day. When you follow this rule, you will notice that you have started taking small decisions to achieve your goal. You will stop making excuses and start giving up bad habits that comes in your way. By adding these small decisions, you will see a big result. This rule will work as long as you continuously using it. This will help you remove fear from your life and take control of your decisions.
Chapter 3
5 The second rule works because it’s so simple. When you have a lot of desire to achieve a goal or you are hesitant to do the work you should do, then take action by adopting this rule. Start counting from behind, 5-4-3-2-1 and get up as soon as you reach it.
Instead of getting stuck in something, this rule will force you to do things. The more time we spend thinking about doing any work, the more chances increase that we will never be able to do that work. This rule helps in ending this evil habit of us . You can use this rule in 3 ways. First, you can change your old bad habits and adopt or develop new habits. Second, you can use this rule to defeat your fear and increase your confidence. And third, by controlling your mind, you can eliminate negative thoughts and worries. You can use this rule to make any part of your life better because it works on “you”. By changing a bad habit by this rule, you will become such a person in yourself.
Chapter 4
We often think about the tales of courage that such courageous work requires high spirits, which immortalized many tales in history, but this courage is what we do in our everyday life. I can also see. In life, moments of fear and restlessness challenge us to face them. This courage is already present inside each and every one of us. When we need it the most in life, to face a problem or to take action, it gives us a push and a boost.
This Courage comes in different forms. For Example, Rosa Parks performed “Extra Ordinary Everyday Courage” when she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama in 1955. Rosa later recalled the incident, saying she had done so. Didn’t plan or stop to think about the consequences. She decided it in an instant because her tolerance limit had been exceeded.
Chapter 5
So, What are you waiting for? We all have played the “waiting game” in our life, waiting for the right time to start a business or to make ourselves more confident. Whatever the reason for this wait , it is holding you back. Because every moment of waiting for you not only delays you in achieving your dreams, but you are actually working against your dreams. The truth is that there will be never right time. None of us know how long our life is. We only have this moment right now and it depends on you that how you live these moments.
We often keep waiting for an external push to achieve our dreams. We just want to hear from their mouth that our idea is amazing and we have that ability that we can achieve our destination. Instead of wanting to hear this from others outside, fill yourself up with enthusiasm.
Chapter 6
You’ll Never Feel Like It. We may consider ourselves to be a logical decision takers, but the truth is that most of our decisions are taken by feelings . So now you must have understood that why any kind of change seems so difficult, we know what we should do, but ultimately our feelings take the decision. So here 5 second rule helps us to go against the feelings and take immediate action. How you feel and what action you take, these two have to be separated, then only you will be able to be successful. At starting, the result is not important, it is important that you did something to start, someone took action. Let’s imagine that you work in a company and your goal is to get promotion. Now for this, you read many books, attended seminars and took the help of a coach. But you know very well that to get promotion you need to put forward your ideas of speaking but you can not do it.
So here you can easily apply this rule. End this habit of being silent in the meeting as by doing this you are doubting yourself. 5-4-3-2-1 Push yourself to speak, starting the count, to share your ideas.
Chapter 7
How to Start Using the Rule. Change is simple but not easy. The best way to adopt this rule in your life is to start with the “Wake Up Challenge”. Set an alarm 30 minutes before you wake up and get out of your bed after counting 5-4-3-2-1 in the morning when the alarm goes off. This is an effective way to apply this rule, there are many reasons for this. First, this is a very simple and simple method. When your alarm goes off, either you will follow this rule or you will turn off your alarm. If you are succeed in changing your morning routine, then you can change any part of your life.
You will experience what psychologists call “activation energy”. This is a big push that you need in the beginning in order to change your life. You will find it very difficult to get out of bed in the morning but after that the whole day will start feeling very easy. Just as Robbins followed this rule to turn off the alarm and face his day, this rule made many positive changes in her life. Stephen also has a similar story. He did not have any job for 4 months. After that he applied this rule, starting with the “Wake Up Challenge”. This habit of getting up early changed his way of thinking. Now he was able to find a job that he really liked. Now Stephen could pay his bill and also started saving the remaining money. One small change had filled her life with positivity.
Chapter 8
Improve Your Health. The goal of many people is to make their health better than before, whether it is to lose weight, or to heal themselves from any disease. Today, despite of having so much information about a healthy life, it is no less than a struggle. Here again our feelings start taking decisions.. You know that home food is better than buying fast food but still you buy food from outside because you didn’t “feel” to cook food in the morning. You already know that instead of watching TV, you should go for a walk, but you do not “feel” to go out in the cold. Now this rule is needed here.
Chapter 9
Increase Productivity. Productivity depends on your ability to focus. You have to focus on your work by just ignoring the distracting things in your life. And instead of wasting time on useless things, do the work which is most important first.
You have to be serious about managing your distractions. We know very well how much the notifications coming on smartphones, ipads and other electronic devices distract us. Even knowing everything, why don’t you ignore it? It is simple but not that easy, is it? But doing this small thing can make such a big difference in your productivity that you will be surprised.
You have to be active and plan your day properly. This also means that you should take advantage of 2-3 hours in the morning as researchers has proved this, that our mind is most fresh at that time, so we are most productive at that time.
Chapter 10
Beat Fear is also an important part of a person’s life when he has to face a scary situation. Our fears has different forms but what they all have in common is taking away from us the pleasure of enjoying that moment.
Whenever you have to face a terrible situation in life, you can defeat your fear with a simple technique. In this an “anchor thought” is created i.e. a thought that supports you. It is just like facing your fear gives you a positive thing. So if you are facing a situation in which you are very scared, then by catching this thought, you can reduce your fear somewhat.
Chapter 11
End Anxiety. Restlessness is more than worry. The way to control is to understand it and then change it. We will definitely experience such moments in our life where we start feeling nervous, like when we suddenly come in front of a moving vehicle. Bachaini (Hindi word of anxiety) is called when anxiety starts happening without any major reason. You are doing a simple thing like pouring coffee into the cup and suddenly you will start feeling restless.
We know of two ways to treat this discomfort, which are therapy and medicines, another method which the authors call the “reframing strategy”. It means to turn your restlessness into excitement as for our body both these feelings are absolutely beans. It is our brain which calls them by different names. So when you start to worry, you can use the 5 second rule to stop it from turning into a panic. Start counting to 5 and tell yourself that you are just excited.
Chapter 12
Stop Worrying. If you’re like most of us. Instead of enjoying your life, you put your time and energy just worrying about it
When your mind starts going to negative and depressing thoughts, then do not let it affect you, instead you apply this rule and try to put your thinking in positive direction.