Transcript of How the 5 Second Rule Can Transform Your Life in Just 5 Seconds | Mel Robbins

Okay, so 2009. That's when you first tried it or discovered it. Oh, it's a total horror show mistake.

Okay. Yes. Okay.

So, 2009, I was unemployed and feeling like-Are you unemployed? How? Well, okay. Too much charisma, too much passion. Yeah, because everything's working right now. That's why. I'm not like this when things are not working. Ask my husband. I have 22 years. Well, what had happened is I had had all these career changes, and I got into the media business, again, by mistake. I had a coaching business, and Inc. Magazine was writing an article about coaches, and they featured me in it, and CNBC called. Got it. That led to me doing some stuff with CNBC. I spent a year still coaching people and then doing some stuff for CNBC, and then Fox called. They were interested in having me host a television show. Now, you got to understand, I'm from North Muskegan, Michigan. I mean, the media business, Fox, LA, the closest thing I had ever seen to a celebrity, Lewis, was the Muskegan Lumberjacks, the farm team, right? For the Pittsburgh Penguins. Yeah, the AA team or whatever. Yeah, my dad was the hometown doc for the hockey team there. Right, right, right. So I thought, wow. The mayor was a celebrity. My life's about to change.

I'm about to be a celebrity. Wow, we're going to solve all. This is amazing. I was originally going to be hosting a show for Fox where we were making over small businesses. Nice. Yeah, pretty cool, right? We show up, we do extreme home makeover for the office. Everybody's happy. We all know that doesn't solve business problems, but it makes for a nice television show. By the time I get to LA, they've changed the format. It's now called Someone's Got to Go, and I'm going to be firing people on national television from real jobs. Wow. That sounds fun.

Horrible.

Oh, my gosh. Plus, we haven't told the offices that this is what we're doing. Oh, my gosh. You show up in act one and you've got everybody all like this because you think they're going to get new IKEA furniture and a paint job, and this is going to be the best thing in the world for their small business. Now, meanwhile, I'm a fourth-generation small business owner, so that's like my people. Grew up at a kitchen table with farmers. My mom had a retail store, and my other grandparents were bakers. When it comes to the heart and soul and what's so important when you launch your own business and how personal it is, this was gut-wrenching. I show up, the first act, you kick out the owner of the company who then freaks out, then all the employees freak out. Act number two, we announced that somebody's getting fired, and then that's the bad news. The good news is that I'm not picking. We're going to have you vote somebody out. It's survivor in an office place. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my goodness.

That sucks.

When I learn all this, I have a panic attack, even though I'm on Zoloft, and I call the guy that got me the gig and say, You got to get me out of this. This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. He said, Well, I'm sorry, but they've already cast the entire show, and you're out there for five weeks, and you don't have a choice. They're going to sue you. I said, Then fine, get me some Xanax because I don't think I can get through this thing. This is awful. Luckily, we taped two episodes, and legal tabled it. But here was the problem. I was attached to the show, and I only got paid if the show was shooting. Being an entrepreneur, I also put all my energy into this, shut down the coaching thing, really thought that it also negotiated a deal that was a back-end deal, thinking I'm an entrepreneur, always thinking about got to have a piece of the action. Take a little less up front. Yes. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that was a dumb move. I was in a contract for a year while they figured out what to do.

So you couldn't do another show. Yeah. I just felt like I had made a huge mistake, and I felt really embarrassed. I didn't know at the age of 41 what I should be doing with my life. And while it's neat that I had jumped careers so many times, I started to feel like somebody that actually wasn't successful at all because I didn't have a career track. I had a bunch of jumps from one thing to another. Now, looking back, it makes perfect sense, but standing in the middle of the mess, it just felt like everything was caving in, probably just like when you were sleeping on your couch, feeling injured and everything I thought that was about to happen isn't happening now. Meanwhile, my husband had opened up a restaurant business. It had been his dream. He worked in high tech and came home one day after laid off and said, I'm never going to get on a plane and do a PowerPoint presentation for a company I don't care about her own. I said, Great. What's your plan? He said, I'm going to open a pizza restaurant. I looked at him and I said, Was there a trust fund that was part of this marriage that I was unaware of?

Because I'm not quite sure how we're going to pay you. Because we're going to get the money. Exactly. Did someone die? You got an insurance policy check. Yes. He said, No. I then said the most famous lines of our 2022 marriage, your marriage, Louis, I looked at him and I said, Listen, buddy, inspiration is for strangers. You get your ass back to that job and you pay the mortgage and you forget the stream. You're not going to do this. Well, because change is scary. We fought and he won. The first one was a real home run. You went to a pizza store. Oh, he did. Yeah, 40 seats right outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He and his best friend. They won best of Boston. It was incredible. What do you do when everything's-They make money, though. They did on the first So what do you do when everything's working? Let's do another one. Let's go all chips in. Let's put in the home equity line. Let's put in the kids' college savings. Let's get friends and family. Because you're so excited, you think it's going to work. So you go big, big, big. Well, the second one did not work at all.

It did not work at all so badly that when it was finally closed, it was close to an $800,000 loss. It meant our entire home equity line, kids' college savings, everything went right down with it. That was right when I lost the Fox show. So I'm unemployed. The lean start hitting the house. The phone starts ringing all the time in its collections calls. So you unplug the phone. That would stress me out. Well, you just unplug the phone. Oh, my gosh. That's how you deal with that. But I remember two things from that period of my life that were really painful. And one was having to call the town and tell them that we could not afford the $175 for our sixth grader to play soccer, so we needed to pull her out. I remember there being times because I was so afraid to look at the checking account, that I would stand at the grocery store and items would scan, and I could just feel that wave of anxiety rising, thinking, I don't think the check card is going to go through. And so I would stand there. I always had an excuse, and it was to look at the person and go, Oh, that's strange.

It just worked at the gas station. Oh my gosh. Because what would have been more empowering is to probably say, Oh, well, I guess I don't have the money for this. Let's take this, this, and this, and just the easiest thing to do is to tell the truth. But I was so filled with shame. I started to develop this habit of hitting the snooze button because what would happen is the alarm would go off in the morning, and the first thing I would think about is all the problems that we had and how awfully things had gone off the tracks. You didn't want to deal with them? No. I also didn't know I didn't think I could. And this goes back to the feelings. You think that you need to feel confident or courageous in order to get started. You don't. You actually just have to start. And that's the riddle of life. That lying in bed, hoping that you wake up some morning motivated to change, that's not the answer. You actually have to learn how to push yourself. You have to learn how to leverage the power of your decisions, and you've got to learn how to take action when you don't feel like it.

Because every morning when I woke up, I did not feel confident. I felt like a loser. I felt like the world's worst parent. I felt like I had failed at every single turn. I did not know if Chris and I could pull out of this spiral. I did not know if we were going to go bankrupt and lose the house and move from our community. I did not know if our marriage would survive. I knew I wanted it to. See, this is the knowledge-action gap. You can know what you want, you can know what you should be doing, but how do you make yourself do it when the feelings and the motivation isn't there, when all you got is fear? Every night, I would lie in bed and I would say to myself, All right, that's it, Mel. Tomorrow, It's the new you. Tomorrow, you're going to wake up and be motivated. You're going to get up. You're going to exercise like everybody says you should. You're going to meditate. You're going to get those kids on the bus. You're going to screw Fox. You're going to look for a job. You're going to cold call Cox Media, and you're going to do auditions.

Come on, girl. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. You're going to take a cold shower. Here we go. I meant it when I was saying it. Maybe it was the alcohol that was talking. But then I would wake up, and I didn't feel any of those things. So I would hit the snooze, and I would hit the snooze. Now, why was I hitting the snooze when I knew it wasn't the right decision? I'm going to tell you why. This is something that I was blown away by when I discovered it. You don't make decisions with your goals. You don't make decisions with your prefrontal cortex. You don't make decisions with logic. Do you know how we make decisions? I didn't invent this. A neuroscientist by the name of Demacio, who does his research in Brazil, who gave an incredible TED Talk and wrote about this forever and ever and ever. We make decisions with feelings. 95% of our decisions are made by how you feel in the moment. And that is the problem. You need to take control of the moment and leverage the power of your decisions and make them up here. Because when When I was lying in bed, I wasn't saying to myself, I should get up because that's going to help me start my day right.

I was saying, Do I feel like getting up?

No, you don't. No. Do you feel like making that cold call? No, you don't. Do you feel like doing that third set of reps? No, you don't. Do you feel like having that hard conversation? No, you don't. Do you feel like ending this relationship, whether it's in business or in your life, that is sucking you dry? No, you don't. We make decisions based on our feelings, and that is robbing you of joy and opportunity. It is blinding you from the fact that how you change your life is one five-second decision at a time, one push at a time. If you accept the fact that you may never feel ready, and you may never feel motivated, and you may never feel confident, you may never feel courageous, and that's okay, but you can still push yourself forward. What happens over time is as you start to see yourself becoming the person that takes action, that you start to see yourself becoming the person that speaks, even though your voice is shaking, you're the person that has a bias toward moving instead of a bias toward thinking, guess What happens? You build the skill of confidence and courage.

What happened for me is I was stuck, Louis. I was so stuck. I mean, we were heading straight for divorce. We were heading for bankruptcy. I knew I wanted to change things. One night, I see this commercial. This is the stupidest story on the planet, but this is what happened. I see this commercial. Again, I also was drinking too much. I mean, I probably had a couple of Manhattan in me. It's my drink. I'm from the Midwest, just like you. All right, little Manhattan there, bourbon. There was a rocket ship launching.On a commercial?Yeah. I had this instinct, this innovation, this disruptive It's a creative idea, right? Oh, my God, Mel, that's the answer. Tomorrow morning, you're going to launch your ass out of bed like a rocket ship. You're going to move so fast, you can't even think about your problems. Dumb, right? Totally dumb. It's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. I cannot believe I have this check on my podcast. I understand it. You got to get moving first. Yes. That's the thing. You just got to wake up at 6:00 AM or wherever it is and go into the gym. When you're in the gym, you're going to start moving the first weight, and then you'll start moving the second wait.

Actually, people use the five-second rule at the gym because you know how much time people waste at the gym standing around thinking about the next thing? Probably 70% of the time. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The next morning, the alarm goes off, and nothing had changed in my life. I woke up to the lean on the house, the fighting with Chris, the unemployment, the lack of confidence, the lack of courage, the whole thing. But I did something I had never done before. I went 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, just like NASA. I actually counted. Then I stood I was like, What the hell just happened? What? That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The next morning, I used it again. It worked. The next morning, I used it again. It worked. Then I started to notice something. This is one of those things. We have an 11-year-old son who has dyslexia. When they finally diagnosed him, it was as if... Of course. It was as if, How could we have possibly missed this? Are we the worst parents in the world? The kid can barely write. He can't cut his food. No wonder he doesn't do team sports.

It was right under our nose. What I'm about to tell you is right under everybody's nose. There's a five-second window between the instincts, the shoulds, the urges, the inner wisdom, the things that can change your life if you listen to it. Got a five-second window from the moment you feel that instinct to move. If you don't, your brain is actually designed to kill it. Five seconds is all you have. The second you hesitate, and you feel yourself hesitating, that is a moment of huge power because what's happened is you've just started to pull back from something that you need to lean into. If you count backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and this is the neuroscience behind why this stupid little trick works. Counting is an action. Counting backwards requires focus. It's also not a habit for you yet. When you feel yourself hesitate, you're triggering your mind that something's up. Like, Louis didn't He didn't hesitate when he pulled on his pants. He didn't hesitate when he's drinking his coffee. He didn't hesitate when he walked out the door to the gym, but now he's hesitating to make that call. Your mind now goes into a cognitive bias called the spotlight effect.

It magnifies whatever it was that you hesitated doing. The moment. The moment. All of a sudden, you're like, I don't feel like it. I don't know. Maybe I'll do it later. And your mind is doing it because your mind's trying to protect you. Hesitation signals a red flag to your mind that something's up. Just that small hesitation. It's a habit that we all have. Should you hesitate if you're getting a tattoo? Yes. Should you hesitate if you're gambling? Yes. Should you hesitate if you are signing a legal document? Yes. You need your prefrontal cortex for those things. You need to interrupt it, make a decision. Should you hesitate on making a phone call? No. Should you hesitate on speaking up in a meeting? No. Should you hesitate when you feel yourself starting to procrastinate and you know you got work that you should get done? No. You shouldn't hesitate at all. Should you hesitate in saying the thing that you really feel in your heart? No, you shouldn't. Should you hesitate and edit yourself when you're talking? No, you shouldn't. But we've all trained ourselves, too. It's actually this habit of hesitating. You start catching yourself.

It's a huge moment of power because you have a decision to make and you got to make it in the next five seconds. Are you going to go on autopilot? And get trapped in your mind? Or are you going to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and awakeen your prefrontal cortex and drive forward? I started to use this rule as I noticed that every day, all day long, I had these moments of inner wisdom where I would know that I needed to pick up the phone and stop isolating myself. I would know that I needed to call a bunch of media companies and start auditioning for radio show hosting gigs. I knew that I should get out of bed on time. I knew I should stop myself before I snapped at Chris. Self monitor. I knew I should not let the frustration be the things that was driving me. I started to use the rule all day long. Whenever I felt this, I I would do this, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and I would make myself do it. And slowly, five seconds at a time, my entire life started to change. My husband used it in his business, and he and his business partner dove in.

They went on to open seven more restaurants. I went on to launch and sell two businesses and get recruited by CNN and join their team. I had a syndicated radio show that ended up winning the Gracie Award, which is the female media awards for the number one talk show in the country. I never intended to tell anybody about the five-second rule. First of all, because it's stupid. Right. I mean, come on, count backwards. That's the dumbest thing I've heard. That's stupid to me, though. Anything that works, works for me. That's true. You know what I mean? I'll take any stupid thing. That's true. But I also was like, How do you start talking about something like that? I was asked to give a TED Talk six years ago, and TED, six years ago, not the brand that it was today. They weren't even putting the talks online yet. Really? Yeah, the TEDx talks were not online That was the first speech I'd ever given in my life. If you want to see what somebody looks like having a panic attack for 21 minutes straight, watch that speech. I was backstage and it was like one PhD after another going out there.

I'm like, What the hell have I gotten myself into this? This is the thoughtiest thing. At the very end, I wasn't even planning on talking about it. I say, Oh, by the way, there's this thing I do. That's it. I don't even explain it. You know why I didn't explain it, Louis? I didn't know why it worked. So you didn't have the science, the research. You were just like... Zero. Then something crazy happened. They put that talk online a year later and people started to write. We've heard from more than 100,000 people in 90 countries that have written to us that are using the rule in ways big and small to change their lives, to change their marriages, to change their thinking patterns, to grow their businesses. We know of 11 people that have stopped themselves from killing themselves. In the moment, there's a gentleman that we talk about in the book, and you can see his social media posts in London. He was a veteran, and he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and he boarded a ferry with the intention of jumping overboard. He got to the railing, and he was standing there, and his inner wisdom kicked in.

And this is another thing I want everybody watching to understand. I don't care what you're facing or how low you get. Your inner wisdom is always there. It is. And the thing is, is that we often don't listen to it. And so he's standing there intending to kill himself, and that inner wisdom kicks in, and he remembers the five-second rule. And he goes, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and he turns and physically moves away from the railing and finds the first person working on the ferry and tells him that he's suicidal. Saved his life. He saved his life because he listened to the inner wisdom. This is the other thing I love about this rule. It's not something to think about. It's a tool to use. The part of the problem with a lot of the advice that I've found, for me personally, is that a lot of advice is all about doing mental battle. If I go upstairs, I'm behind enemy lines, and I tend to get hijacked. I love this tool because 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 interrupts those patterns. It actually prompts the part of the brain that I need in order to change.

It makes changing easier because I've now got my mind working for me instead of against me, and it gets me out of my head. I'm super excited to share this rule with people because I now know not only that it's working, just not for me. It's working for people around the world. In the book, it took me three years to write it. It's all the science behind the rule. It's got more than 150 social media posts in it. You see stories from around the world of people using it to to end procrastination, to build confidence, to deepen their relationships, to launch businesses, to explode the sales. Why does it help with sales? I'll tell you why. Because you can't sell by thinking. Selling is about action. We have groups from companies around the world, sales teams, that put 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 up on the wall. I'm sure they hate me. That's cool. Yes, because cold calling, it's a momentum thing. If you stop and think, the dialing is not happening when you're thinking. If you're thinking about all those nos you've been getting, you're not going to want to do it again because it doesn't feel good.

Yes. If you're in the middle of a negotiation or you're in the middle of a really difficult conversation, and again, remember what we said earlier? You cannot control your feelings that rise up, but you can always control how you think and what you do. So if you're in the middle of a difficult conversation and you feel those feelings come up that normally trigger you to start editing yourself or to censor yourself or to silence yourself or to think sabotaging thoughts in a business negotiation, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Awaken the prefrontal cortex. Get back in the game.

Well, thank you for having me. And you, I think of probably anybody on the planet will get what I'm about to say in your comments because you understand the profound impact that the five-second rule as a starting ritual has had on millions of people's lives, helping them move from thinking to doing. And even sitting here, Jim, with you, which it's just an honor being such a fan of your work, too, to be here with you, even sitting here knowing the impact that the five-second rule has had on millions of people's lives. I'm going to tell you something. What's that? The high five habit is an even bigger deal with more profound change. And I can't wait to unpack it, but I'll tell you personally, I use the five-second rule to turn my life around, to go from being to being extraordinarily successful, to changing every habit I have, to improving my marriage. It got me into action. But I'll tell you what it never did. It never silenced the critic in my head that I lived with. It never ended the relentless beat down that I was giving myself. And it never broke the habit that I had of constantly hating myself or focusing on the things that weren't working instead of celebrating myself and focusing on the things that were.

And the high five habit cuts right down through all that noise and reconnects you with the you that's in there, with the confidence that is your birthright. And the way that it literally reprograms your mind is breathtaking.

Well, we talk a lot about morning routines, And this was the easiest thing to add to my routine that's given me so much in return. And not just in a short period of time, in terms of the ripple of it, but even just immediately. It just celebrating myself in the bathroom mirror. And we could talk about how that works. I'm also, by the way, pulling back a big fan of just counting down from five, getting myself out of bed or getting myself to put on my running shoes. And so I could see the difference in how they complement each other so well. And so maybe we could walk our listeners through this, and I would highly recommend everyone. Our audience loves to read to make sure you get your copy also as well.

Well, so it's very simple. And since I know that your listeners want to get right into the science and right into what to do, I'm not even going to tell you the story because I did not set out to create this. I created the high five habit on a morning that everybody can relate to. A morning where life felt overwhelming, a morning where I felt defeated, a morning where I felt stuck and dreading the day. And I was standing there brushing my teeth, Jim, And I catch my reflection in the mirror and I think, Oh, you look like hell. And then all of a sudden, I started to criticize the way that I looked, like the dark circles under my eyes, the bags under my chin and neck and one boob's hanging lower than the other. And then once your thoughts go negative, they take you down. So now I'm thinking about my day ahead and I'm beating myself up. Why did I get up so late? And I've only got eight minutes to the first Zoom call, and the dog hasn't even been walked. And you just said something interesting. It's an easy thing.

The high five habit is an easy thing to add to the morning routine. We all talk a lot about morning routines. It wasn't until I discovered this that I realized there was a piece to my morning routine I was not even aware of. A habit that I needed to break, Jim. A habit that gratitude and exercise and all this stuff was not actually erasing. A habit of standing before the bathroom mirror and either ignoring the human being you see in the mirror or criticizing them. That is how we start our day. 91% of women don't like how they look. 50% of us can't I don't even look in the mirror. I know it's true for men, too. We stand in judgment. And so what happened for me this morning, here's the high five habit. It is profoundly simple. It's going to change your life the second you're done brushing your teeth. And I want you to do it Right after you brush your teeth, because I want you to stack this habit with something you're already doing because you listen to this podcast that it's the fastest way to learn a new behavior. Let's get the gunk out of your teeth so you don't spread dragon breath on Everybody, now let's get the gunk out of your head so you're not spreading negativity throughout your day.

As you stand in front of the mirror, I want you to leverage a little piece of research from Harvard. New research shows that if you take less than a minute and you intentionally think about the day ahead and how you're going to show up as a leader, it changes your productivity, your focus, how you show up, and your ability to impact people. Let's throw that out the window in terms of being a leader, and let's look in the mirror, and let's use that for ourselves to improve of our own lives. I want you to take a second and I want you to realize there's actually two people in the bathroom every morning, Jim. There's you and there's a human being in the mirror that's been waiting for you to wake up and realize they need you. They're trying hard. They've got a good heart. They need your support and your encouragement. They need you to see them. They need you to love them. That is literally what I'm talking about when I talk about the high five habit that you wake up and recognize there is a person you go through life with that stares you back in the mirror every morning and your habit right now is to tear them down or ignore them.

And I want you to set an intention, and I want you to look at them in the morning. And this is going to feel weird because you're going to realize I've never actually asked myself this question. And here's the question, and here's the question. What is that person in the mirror? What is she or he or they? What do they need from me today? We think about it for work, for our families, for everybody else. You've never stopped and asked yourself, looking at yourself in the mirror, how do I need to show up for that person today? Then, as you've got that intention, despite the fact that it feels weird, despite the fact you're going to resist this, and we can talk about why you're going to feel most likely resistance. I then want you to raise your hand, and I want you to high five the reflection. And what's amazing about this new habit, Jim, is your brain and your nervous system are already designed to do the work for you.

Because also, you think about how we high five other people throughout the day. And to celebrate them, to encourage them. But we're not always doing that. It's interesting because no amount of love is enough to fill the yearning that our soul requires from ourselves. When do we work daily on being in love with that person in the mirror who has been through so much, but is still standing?

Yeah. And think about some of the habits that we know based on research. Change your life. Meditation. Meditation Meditation is profoundly important. The benefits you talk about all the time. Meditation develops self-awareness. It also helps you learn how to be non-reactive to your thoughts, but it doesn't change your default thoughts. Gratuit Also hugely important. Tremendous benefit. Yes, you should have a gratitude practice. However, almost all of us, when we practice gratitude, we think about things outside of ourselves that we're grateful for. And so the high five habit is about bringing the power back in house. It's about giving you a science-back tool that will teach you through a simple action how to support, how to love, how to encourage, how You celebrate yourself every single day. And let me explain the science, because this is where things get crazy. The reason why this works is because of the programming that's already in your brain. So you have a lifetime of giving and receiving high fives. In fact, Jim, when somebody high fives you or you high five somebody else, what is the gesture alone of a high five tell somebody else?

That they are extraordinary. They are amazing. Congratulations. You're winning.

Exactly. You don't ever high five somebody and say, I hate you. You always high five and are like, I love you. We You got this. No problem. You go get them. You're going to win. Even if somebody just blew it, you high five them and it's like, shake it off. Come on. I still believe in you. Let's go. And so all of that programming is right here in the interior of your brain. It's in your basal ganglia. It is in your subconscious. It is sitting there, and it is married to the action of high fiving. So what happens is when you stand there, you set this intention, you're with yourself, you see yourself, you feel the resistance, you ignore the resistance, you go to high five yourself. Your brain is like, oh, I know what this gesture means. It activates the subconscious programming. It silences the critic and the beat down. You can't think anything but positive thoughts. It's impossible neurologically because of the programming already in your brain. And then over time, if you do this, give me just five days. You do this five days in a row. Fight through the weirdness because it's new and the resistance because you have the opposite habit.

You judge yourself. You reject yourself. When you high five yourself, it silences that. It activates the programming that's already in your brain, and it starts to marry it with your own reflection. And that's not all. I talked to our buddy Dr. Amen, the the other day. He went bananas when he heard about this. He's like, Mel, holy cow. Do you realize you also get a boost in your mood? Because when you high five other people, you get a dopamine drip. So you get a dopamine drip when you do this to yourself. He also said, you know how when you come into the bathroom and you're dragging in the energy. And when you high five yourself, whether it's because you laugh or because you just feel good, you get this little pep in your steps. So you start your day feeling slightly more energized. I'm like, yeah, Dr. Amen, tell me about that. He said, well, that's your nervous system. Your nervous system is encoded with celebratory energy. When you cross a finish line, you raise your hands. When your favorite team scores, you raise your hands. When you say hello to somebody, you raise your hands.

When you hug somebody, you raise your hands. When you high five, you raise your hands. Your nervous system remembers it. That's where the energy comes from. The coolest thing about the high five habit, Jim, is the programming is already in you because you've been doing this your whole life for everybody else.

And we are hard Hard for this.

Hard, wired. In fact, when you were born, DNA in your DNA was celebration and joy. Little kids, when you see them in front of a mirror, they don't step back and go, My thighs are fat. Man, I'm a loser. They don't do that. They spin, they high five the mirror, they kiss the mirror, they love themselves. This is your birthright. It was your life experience that taught you to judge and reject yourself. And I'm here to tell you this simple habit of standing before the mirror and raising your hand and high-fiving yourself like you so willingly do for everybody else. You don't have to say a thing. You can have resistance. You can feel You feel that it's weird. You can literally reject it in your mind as you start to do it, and you will experience massive transformation as you complete the gesture because your mind is wired for this. My husband, Jim, a lot of people know the story because it was his restaurant business failing that rocked us into this personal crisis. And that's when I invented the five second rule. Well, his best friend and he worked at that restaurant business for seven years.

And at the end of the seven years, they sold it for a song to a new investor. Our best friend, his business partner, was able to shrug and go, Okay, well, that's entrepreneurship. I'm very proud of what we did. I'm proud of how hard we worked. And did we return the profit we wanted? No. But I'm still proud of myself. My husband couldn't do that. My husband said, I failed. Do you know for seven years, he has looked in the mirror every morning, Jim, like so many of us do, and dragged his past in there and said, Because this thing in my past, I am a failure. I am unworthy. I am unlovable. When I first started this high five thing in April of 2020 to pick myself up after getting fired from my dream job as a talk show host and in the throes of the pandemic and my kids in crisis and the world in crisis and just feeling overwhelmed. Chris couldn't do it. And the reason why he couldn't do it is the reason why everybody's resistant to doing it. It's because he was dragging all of that judgment and everything from his past into the bathroom every morning.

And he was saying, because of that experience, I don't see a human being that's worthy of celebration. So if you've experienced trauma or abuse or discrimination, or you've been abandoned, or you're a human being and you've done things you've regreted or you wish you could change, and you'd forgive Jim or me for it, but you stand in judgment of yourself, you will resist this because right now you see a human being who doesn't deserve celebration. If you're like Jim and I, and you are very much achievement-driven, you may realize as you resist this that you don't celebrate yourself unless you've done something, unless you've worked out, unless you've got the money in the bank, unless you're driving the Range Rover, unless you fix that thing. And what I'm here to tell you is we got it all opposite, Jim. You see, we've been withholding the very support and celebration that we need in order to feel inspired, encouraged, and motivated to take the actions that change our life. First of all, the biggest failure of my life is what led me to discovering the Five Second Rule, which is the basis of my entire media business.

It was the first book I put out. I I hit rock bottom in 2008. I'm a lot older than you two. I'm like your older, saucier sister. You probably think that I... Yes, you better have your seatbelts on because... I'm ready. Here we go. This is going to be a ride. No, I hit rock bottom. My husband's restaurant business was failing, and I had been laid off. The recession hit the United States, and I found myself at the age of 41 with three kids under the age of 10, unemployed and nearly a million in debt. We had secured the restaurant business by cashing out our life savings, the kids' college plans. We had taken out a home equity line because, hell, that's free money. We had cashed out our credit cards. We had shoved it all in, and the first location had done Dynamite, and the next two were complete dogs. When failure hit, because I never dreamt that at 41, I would be facing bankruptcy, divorce, and a drinking problem. When failure I faced my issues like a lot of high-functioning people do, and that is by screaming at my husband and blaming everything on him and drinking myself into the ground, avoiding my problems and hiding from my friends.

That's basically what I did.

At It does not sound like the Mel Robbins you know. I knew what to do. This is the central thesis of the work that I'm putting out into the world and the things that I'm sharing. We all know what we need to do. We don't have a making clue how to make ourselves do it. When you're afraid, when you're anxious, when you're beaten down, when you're doubting yourself, when you're jealous, when you're insecure, those states, whether they're emotional or mental, they drag you down. At the age of 41, I would wake up every morning, you two, and I would be pinned to my bed by anxiety. It was like a gravity blanket that was just pinning me down. I would stare at the ceiling, and I would think about my problems, and I would think about what a failure I was. I felt like the world's worst mom. We lived in this really nice suburb outside of Boston. So everywhere I looked, I saw people who were successful and people who had nice cars. I could not pay for groceries. I had to ask my father to pay for our mortgage while we were literally trying to figure out what to do.

That was the moment that I discovered the five-second rule, by mistake, by mistake, you two. I was a lawyer. I then got into the first dot com wave. I never intended to become a motivational speaker. I never thought about writing a book. I had to save my own ass because I realized nobody was going to come and do this for me. Every night, I would sit there and I would give myself a pep talk. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation like this in your life where you're like, All right, that's it. Tomorrow morning, I am changing. Tomorrow morning, I'm getting out of bed. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to stop drinking. I'm not going to be a bitch to my husband. I'm going to look for a job. I'm going to tell my friends the truth about what's going on. I am the new Mel. Then the next morning, I'd wake up and the old, shitty, drunk, angry, bitchy Mel would still be there, and I would continue to feel stuck. Then one night, as I was sitting there giving myself this talk that I got a change, I saw this rocket launch at the end of a commercial, and I thought, That's it.

That's the secret. Tomorrow morning, when the alarm goes off, instead of lying there and letting When that anxiety and fear consume me, I'm going to launch myself out of bed like a rocket.

I'm going to move so fast that I'm not going to be in that bed when that anxiety hits. Now look, I'd had four Bermuda Manhattan's that night, so it was probably the alcohol that gave me that idea because that is the dumbest thing that anybody has ever said in their entire life, right? Well, the next morning, for whatever reason, the alarm goes off, and I remembered the rocket launch, and I started counting backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and I stood up. That was the beginning. I used it in secret for three years to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, push myself to take action, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, put myself in pause and not scream at Chris. And slowly but surely, one decision at a time, my whole life changed. I picked up the phone and networked until I got a job. I not stopped drinking entirely, but could stop after a glass of wine or a Manhattan instead of drowning myself in it. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I was pushing myself forward and exercising realizing and telling the truth and working on my marriage. Then in 2011, somebody asked me if I would be willing to give a talk about career change because I had changed my career so many different times.

It was at a thing I had never heard of called TEDx, and it was one of the first TEDx conferences ever. There was no real formal vetting process. It was the first time I had ever stepped on a stage. Yes, I had been a criminal defense attorney, but it's very different to talk a jury and a judge than to stand on a stage and stare out into an auditorium with a bunch of people with their arms crossed looking at you. I get out there. The speech is about changing your career, getting out of your own way. It was not about the five-second rule. In fact, I was not going to talk about it because telling people you can change your life by counting backwards from five sounds like the stupidest thing you've ever heard in your entire life. I had no idea why it worked. I was just using it in secret. I start I have that speech. I basically have a 21-minute long panic attack on stage. If you look closely, you will see the neck rash that grows through the entire TED Talk. At the very end, I forget how to end it.

I pause and I say, Oh, there's this thing I do. I call it the five-second rule. The moment you have an instinct to move, you got to move within five seconds before your brain kills it. I was so disassociated, you two. I gave out my email address on stage and then left the stage. A year passes. I go on with my life. I say I'm never giving a speech again. That was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Tedx uploads it. I don't even know it's online. Another year goes by. So now it's 2013, and I'm starting to get messages on Facebook about some speech I gave in San Francisco, and I'm replying like, Oh, were you there? That's how this all began. Then I gave speeches in 2013 for free at women's conferences. Then somebody came up to me at the end of the Pennsylvania Women's Conference and said, Hey, I spoke in the morning and I loved your session. Can I ask you a question speaker to speaker? I said, Sure. They said, Did you get your check yet? I said, Check? You got paid for that? She looked at me in horror and said, You didn't?

I was like, No.

I didn't even know that normal people got paid to stand. I thought you had to be a celebrity or a best-selling author. I did not know that this was a thing that you could do.

One of the things I love about Mel is that she's not someone that just pulls things out of books and regurgitates things. She literally takes time to do real research and provide real techniques and real how-tos that are actually science-backed. But the one that changed her entire career that has impacted millions of lives is called the Five Second Rule. So we're going to get into the whole philosophy and how did she actually create the Five-Second Rule? And all about how it can be used in your personal life as well, your business. What I really admire getting towards talking about that five-second rule, is how it's... There's a lot of people that give advice, but you're the first that I've really... That I love that it's all science-backed. I mean, this isn't just something that you whipped up and decided to just create from a branding perspective. I mean, obviously, it's amazing how you branded yourself and how you branded the five-second rule. But I love how it is all science-backed. A lot of the philosophy, a lot of the techniques that you think.

Everything we talk about has to be proven. Everything. I love that. I don't give you some bullshit I've read in a book or something that I've read on Instagram. The only things that we share are things that are backed by science, that have been researched, that we have seen working in our own lives, that we see working for our audience. I think that is critical because let's face it, anybody can put up a inspirational quote that they've read from somebody else. Anybody can tell you to be positive or do this or put in the work or hustle or whatever the hell it may be. At the end of the day, it's just talk. You have to know how. I also am somebody who is a little bit I'm cynical. I'm embarrassed that I'm in self-help on some level because it sounds stupid, right? I'm older than you. I'm almost 50. Self-help had a really bad name 20 years ago. And I also am Ivy League lawyer, and I am an entrepreneur.

There's a lot of bullshit.

There's a lot of fake people out there.

For sure. I That are renting houses and Ferraris and telling you if you use their click funnel strategy or whatever strategy, that you'll be rich like they are.

And yeah, you may, and chase the money if it energizes you. But there's a lot of smoke and mirrors. I agree. And so if you're going to follow influencers and you're going to look to other people for advice, remember one thing. Would you actually Trade lives with them. Would you actually want to do what they're doing with their life? And if the answer is yes, then listen. But then always come back and reflect on whether or not that advice feels true for you and adjust it. Because the things that I'm saying, they work for me, and I know they work for millions of people, but they might not work for you based on your mental health, based on your financial situation, based on what's going on with your family. The timing might not be right, you might not be mentally capable of doing these things without professional help. So you have to be responsible for yourself. That's the most important thing about personal development. We're here to inspire you and give you things to think about in the hopes that you will take them back into your lives and try them and figure out what works for you.

Let's get into that a little bit because I think that that's what I think you've done better than most. Let's get into the five-second rule because I feel our entire life is based off these choices. I had just posted about it today. You have this philosophy. For those that haven't read the book yet, and I want to get into how this integrates into both personal and into business. Sure. But what is the five-second rule?

The five-second rule is a self-coaching tool. That's all that it is. It's something that I invented literally 20 feet from here in my bedroom, although that bedroom wasn't built back then. We're in the new section of the house.

Love it.

The old section did not look like this. It was something that I invented to beat my habit of hitting the snooze button. And the way that it works is very simple. The moment that you need to do something, and you can feel yourself hesitating, and you can feel the excuses rolling in, count backwards to yourself. Five, four, three, two, one. And something weird will happen. The moment you get to one, you'll actually move. I invented it by mistake. I invented it during, I think, the worst moment of my life, which was 2008. Chris and I, my husband of 22 years, we were about to lose everything. His restaurant business was going under. I had just been fired from a job, my first job in the media business. I was just wallowing in self-doubt because I thought, boy, have I really screwed up? I had changed my career, taken a risk, gone into the media business. It didn't work out. I felt like a total loser. I felt like I made a big mistake. We had three children, mortgage to pay. The entire house had been used to leverage the business. So had our life savings.

So had the kids' college savings. Just on the verge of losing it all, Chris was sleeping on the couch, and I just I'm going to get out of bed. And so I invented this thing, the five-second roll one night, when I saw a rocket ship fly across a television screen at the end of a commercial, and it gave me this idea. And the idea was, I wonder if I launched myself out of bed so fast. I wonder if I could move fast enough that I could beat the self-doubt and anxiety that I felt every single morning when I would wake up. And it was really that dumb and that simple of an idea. And for whatever reason, when the alarm went off that next morning, what happened is what happens to all of us all day long. Inspiration strikes, so the alarm goes off. And use the alarm clock as a metaphor for those moments when you know you should do something. And the alarm goes off. And what's interesting is most of us don't have a problem with what we need to do. It's how we make ourselves do the shit that's hard. So the alarm went off, and immediately, my mind woke up, and my mind started spinning, as our minds do.

And I started immediately thinking, like most of us do when the alarm goes off, fuck. I don't want to get up. It's cold. I don't want to get in the face of the day. I'm unemployed. And then the body starts to get a little tense when anxiety comes in, or you start to feel overwhelmed about the shit you got to deal with. And I felt myself reaching for the snooze alarm, like I always did. But that morning, I went 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And by the time I hit one, I was standing up, and I was freaking out because why would something so simple work? But I went on with my day, and I used it the next morning, and the next morning, and the next morning. And then I started to wonder, God, I see that it works as a cheat for the alarm clock, but I wonder if it could work for other things. So I started to use it for every moment in my life, where I knew what to do, but I didn't feel like it. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 literally just decimates any excuse that you have. And as I started to use it in my life to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, not be an asshole to Chris.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Turn and walk away from the bourbon and not have a drink. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Pick up the phone and network. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Walk out the door and go to the gym. Everything changed because my decisions changed. And the thing that was interesting about that period of my life is that there were a couple of things that is true for all of us that got revealed to me in that moment. And here's what's true for all of us. Number one, our life is defined by our decisions. Number two, most of us know what we should be doing. Number three, if you're in a situation where you should do something, and the excuses roll in, you only have five fucking seconds before the excuses win. That's it. And it has to do with how your brain is designed. And so I started seeing this five-second window everywhere, everywhere. You walk into a networking meeting and the five-second window is right there because you look around and you see all these people you should talk to and you feel yourself freeze. Five, four, three, two, one, and you can start walking.

If you're trying to sell something, the five-second window is always there because you either have a phone you need to pick up and make a phone call or you have a person you need to talk to. But instead of doing it, that five-second window is right there and the excuses roll in Then you're not doing it.

It's almost like we talk ourselves out of it. After five seconds, why not to do it?

All these excuses. Then it's even more sophisticated than that, which is what I discovered. What's more sophisticated about it is that you have two It's the modes to your brain. You have the prefrontal cortex, which is the mode of your brain. It's the front part of your brain that does all your strategic planning, your decision making. Not all your decision making, that's wrong. It does your intentional decision making, conscious decision making. It's what you're using when you're acting with courage. It's what you're using when you are learning anything new. If you've ever taken a standardized test, when you walk out of a standardized test, what do you have? You have a freaking headache because you've been using this part of your your brain. That's the one part. The other part is the interior part of your brain, which automates everything. It's where self doubt is. It's where habits are. It's where automated decision making is. It's where every negative bullshit shit that we do, it's stuck right here. So what the five-second rule is actually doing on a very sophisticated level is it's switching off this part and awakening the part that gives you control.

And so the problem with our excuses, if you want to get into the brain science, is that if you start to you think, and you start to think, I feel tired, or I don't want to, or I'm too stressed out, or now is not the right time, that becomes automatic, and it gets encoded right here. So part of the problem with our excuses is that when you stop and think and hesitate, you trigger your brain to automatically talk you out of it. That's the problem. It's not the excuses. It's that your brain has done it over and over, and now it takes over. So I invented the world's most powerful cheat code for the brain. One night when I was drunk, sitting in my living room watching television. That's the story. And I never intended to tell anybody. Never. Because it sounds dumb, and I didn't know why it worked. But I started using it. Chris started using it. One decision at a time, my life turned around. One decision at a time, his life in restaurant business turned around. We started Inspire 52 and sold it. I cold-called my way into a radio audition.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Landed that. It became a syndicated show, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And I'm doing the work to become better at radio, which requires you to listen to what you're doing, which sucks. Having to hear yourself, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 5, 4, 3, I'm on. Cnn starts calling because I'm winning all these awards. And my life was cranking when I was on CNN. I wasn't even thinking about doing a speaking thing. And then people started to write. Wow. A quarter of a million of them. And 90 countries have written to us. Those are the people that emailed, by the way. That's not all the social media stuff. And so it became so overwhelming because I, of course, was answering all these emails. Because if you were going to take the time to write to me-I think when you try When you create something, that's when it doesn't work.

But then when you think, Oh, this isn't going to be the thing that anyone cares about. This is stupid. It always ends up being that thing that we think is not going to be the one that relates to it.

That's why you got to follow what energizes you. People You can smell a phony a million miles away. And what will make you successful is following the thing that naturally energizes you because it's unique to you. And When your energy is expansive, you will naturally attract people that want that same feeling. It's really that simple. It doesn't feel that simple when you're stuck. I get that. And I can sit here and I don't say it's that simple, but I'm 20-some years into the trajectory of figuring it out.

But, hell, I wish I had known this shit when I was 18.

I would have saved myself a world of hurt.

So many of you have reached out to me talking to me about how to solve your anxiety or your depression. And mental health awareness is so important to me, especially this season, talking about conscious creators. And Mel is somebody that I've really, truly respected because she has helped so many people to heal themselves and solve their anxiety. Some of this most severe anxiety attacks and panic attacks that some of her fans have faced. Now, me personally, not only have I faced depression in my life, but most recently, I've really suffered from anxiety. We're about to get into how Mel feels this is not a disease. This is not something that you can allow to control your life. You have a choice. You can overcome it. We're going to get into how she goes about solving this epidemic that we're all facing.

So when you first started Start using the five-second rule, most people use it to get to the gym, to make sales calls, to get up on time, to have tough conversations, to do the physical stuff. But the real mojo is to use it to rewire your mindset. Okay. And so if you're somebody Everybody that suffers from anxiety, first of all, here's what you need to know, it's not a disease. Period. It's not a disease. There are people that suffer from acute anxiety disorder. They should seek professional help. There's incredible medication that works. I'm talking to the people that suffer from more general anxiety that people feel in their day-to-day lives or that are brought on by a specific situation. I'm also speaking from specific personal experience and the fact that we know of hundreds of thousands of people who've actually cured their anxiety because of what I teach. Here's what you need to understand. Anxiety always begins with a worry. Always. It begins with a thought that is triggered by something. So if you suffer from anxiety, you wake up in the morning and your mind spins, you lay in bed at night and your mind spins, you walk into work and you feel anxious in your body, I want you to write down all the things that trigger you to feel anxious.

Interestingly, another major trigger is being home or going home, and that moment right before your partner walks in the door. If you feel anxious when your partner is about to walk in or you're about to walk into your own home, that is a major signal that you're in the wrong relationship, that there is something incredibly off, and you either need to get into counseling, but that is one that we hear a lot about. Because you're walking into a situation that feels uncertain. A lot of people, by the way, had parents that were abusive or parents that were yellers. So they also are experiencing ghosts from the childhood of it's five o'clock, dad's about to come home and pour a drink, and everybody's on edge. So write down the triggers, okay?

Because having the triggers ahead of time will I hope you come up with a plan for how you're going to catch yourself when your mind defaults to the automatic ways that it thinks.

Then what I want you to write down next to the trigger is what exactly are you worried about? So having the trigger. And then what do I worry about? I worry that my boss is going to yell. I worry that my partner is going to yell. I worry that I'm going to get in trouble. I worry that my friends are going to laugh at me. I worry that I'm going to be... Whatever the fuck it may be. Then what you're going to do is you're going to write down what I call an anchor thought. An anchor thought is something that weighs you down, and it makes you excited. And so here's how the strategy works with the five-second rule. The next time you're in a situation, and let's just use the example of pulling into your own driveway or your own apartment, and maybe you've got issues with your boyfriend or girlfriend or your roommate, and that makes you unsettled. The second you pull in and you feel the trigger, you're going to go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, because I want to interrupt your mind from going into the fuck, fuck, fuck. I don't like What if I do this?

And then you're going to drop in the anchor thought of the last time that you and your roommate really got along well, or the last time that you stood up for yourself and it went fine. Or your puppy. Yeah, or a puppy, or whatever. You're going to say, I'm so excited to deal with this. And then you're going to get out of your car, even though your body is going to feel a little unsettled and your mind's going to raise. Go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. If you start to be like, But what do I do? Then walk in the door. And what I'm teaching you to do is to not let your mind hijack you. It's very important because there's a very tight nexus between your habit of worrying and spiraling your thoughts and the way your body starts to amp up. We want to settle your mind so we don't agitate your body. You got it? Yeah. If you start to practice that over and over and over and over and over Eighteen-year-olds that are watching this, use this with the nerves that you have about what you're going to do with your life.

Use this when you catch yourself worrying about college applications, because worrying about the applications won't get them done. Worry about what your friends are doing won't make it happen. Worry about what you're going to be doing when you're 25 or how you're going to make money, it's not going to help you make money right now. It's only going to make you miserable. So 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, cut off that habit. That'll stabilize your body. And then go to a vision of you at the age of 25, driving a car that you think is cool and hanging out with a friend that's cool and saying yourself, I'm so excited because I know I'm going to figure it out. Because you don't need to worry about that shit right now. But it becomes a habit that destroys your year this year. So you have a choice over what you think about. We all do. By counting backwards, the cheat code that you're doing in your mind is you are interrupting what are called habit loops that get encoded in the central part of your brain, and you are starting up the prefrontal cortex. It's a little trick that causes focus.

And it's a lot like having a mantra because you're shifting gears. But the thing about having a mantra is, and I suppose that as you count backwards more and more and more, you become used to it, but it becomes a habit that triggers action. What you do is go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, cut off this part of the brain, awake in this part of the brain, and then move. What happens What happens with the counting backwards is there's nowhere to go after one. Your mind is socialized in a countdown situation to go.

Counting up won't work because you can keep going. You go forever.

You do it in many aspects of your life, so it's actually not something that requires any focus. See, the prefrontal cortex and functional MRIs is lit up like a Christmas tree when you're doing something that requires courage, when you're engaged in strategic thinking, or when you're learning a new behavior. We've invented, or I created a little cheat for switching the gears manually between the part of the brain that actually makes changing difficult and keeps you stuck and the part of the brain that you need in order to change.5.

4, 3, 2, 1.Yeah..

Then you engage in the behavior that you're afraid of or that the crocodile brain part is saying, Don't do this or this is going to be scary or bad.

If you're sitting with a client who constantly scope creeps on you and you know you want to say something, but you start to feel that hesitation, you're about to chicken out, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

You say, Hey, this is outside the scope of what we talked about. It's not a huge deal, but we just need to redefine the scope to it.

Yeah, you say whatever. Or If you have a drinking problem and you feel yourself drawn toward it, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 interrupts the habit of grabbing for it based on whatever trigger made you want to have the drink and you turn and you move away from it. It is a way to have courage in the moment. It's a way to have self control in the moment. It's a way to be present and awake in the moment. It's a way to interrupt patterns of behavior. I use it right now for my tone of voice. I use it because I get in the zone, and then I have this edge to my tone of voice that I really don't like. The more that we do video and I see it, the more I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I don't want to sound like that. I use it for sure to exercise because I hate to exercise.

I still, eight years later, I mean, I discovered this thing in 2008 by mistake, trying to beat my habit of hitting the snooze alarm.Incredible.Yeah..

I still, every day, use it every single Every single morning to get out of bed.

Every single morning.

I hate getting out of bed. I hate it. I use it now that I'm 48, soon to be 49, when I wake up at 2:37 and I have to go to the bathroom, I use it 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 to just get out of the damn bed because you know what we all do at our age. We lay there and we're like, Okay, just go back to bed, just go back to bed. But that doesn't work. 47 minutes later, you still have to be. So just 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, get up, go to the bathroom, come back, go to bed. All good. Hey, it's Mel.

Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.