Change Your Life with The 5 Second Rule

When Alabama was down at the half during the 2018 College Football Playoff National Championship game, Nick Saban made a change. None of us knows how long Saban pondered the thought, but the fact is that the Crimson Tide came out in the second half with a new quarterback—and a new attitude. University of Alabama went on to defeat the University of Georgia in a come-from-behind win.

I gotta be honest: I was really rooting for Georgia. But, I respect that it took guts for Saban to pull his starter and put in a freshman quarterback. It was pure genius. Acting on his thought is what created the change, which ignited the offense, which ultimately won the game and the title. That moment of action is the principle behind one of the best books I read last year: The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins.

If you haven’t read it, here’s a quick summary: According to Robbins…

Knowing what to do will never be enough.

Knowing why you need to do it will never be enough.

Robbins says it’s not as simple as deciding to do something. “There’s something foundational that has to happen before we can take action, and that is we must learn to conquer our own feelings.

She explains: “Because of the way your brain is wired, when your thoughts and feelings are at war, when there is a discourse between what you know you should be doing and what you feel like doing, your feelings are always going to win.

“What we need is something that’s going to launch us into a state of action.

“If you don’t start doing the things you don’t feel like doing, you will wake up one year from today and be in exactly the same place.”

The one-liner definition of the 5 second rule is this: If you have an impulse to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill the idea.

“The moment you feel yourself hesitate (when you know you should do something) start counting backward 5-4-3-2-1, then GO. The Rule is a proven form of metacognition. When you use it, you shift mental gears, interrupt your habit of overthinking and awaken your pre-frontal cortex – making change easy. The rule acts as a ‘starting ritual’ that breaks bad habits and triggers positive new behavior change.”


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It makes sense, right? Most of us fall into everyday routines. We get comfortable. But sometimes it takes moving beyond that comfort zone and shaking things up to spark change that leads to the action needed to take the first step toward reaching your goal.

The book is a quick read; and Robbins also covers the material in a TED Talk Robbins has given me a new perspective and has prompted me make some quick-fire changes. It’s well worth your time. You’ve got 5 seconds to get on it…

Good luck!
Tim Connor