The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage

by Mel Robbins

When it comes to goals, dreams, and changing your life, your inner wisdom is a genius. Your goal-related impulses, urges, and instincts are there to guide you. You need to learn to bet on them.

when you count backwards, you mentally shift the gears in your mind. You interrupt your default thinking and do what psychologists call “assert control.”

When you physically move instead of stopping to think, your physiology changes and your mind falls in line.

too—there is a five-second window between your initial instinct to act and your brain stopping you.

By pushing yourself to take the simple steps of moving your life forward, you create momentum and experience a sense of freedom and power that’s hard to accurately describe.

The moment it’s time to assert yourself, you will not feel motivated. In fact, you won’t feel like doing anything at all. If you want to improve your life, you’ll need to get off your rear end and kick your own butt.

Using the Rule strengthens your belief that you do have the ability to control your own fate—because you are proving it to yourself one push at a time.

Right before we’re about to do something that feels difficult, scary or uncertain, we hesitate. Hesitation is the kiss of death. You might hesitate for a just nanosecond, but that’s all it takes. That one small hesitation triggers a mental system that’s designed to stop you. And it happens in less than—you guessed it—five seconds.

it’s not the big moves that define our lives; it’s the smallest ones.

By teaching yourself to take action when normally you’d stop yourself by thinking, you can create remarkable change.

Physical movement is the most important part of my Rule, too, because when you move your physiology changes and your mind follows.

We are amazing at fooling ourselves into staying exactly where we are. As soon as that impulse to act kicks in, you start rationalizing it away.

Your brain is afraid of things that feel uncertain, scary, or new, so it will do whatever it can to talk you out of doing those things.

Starting rituals interrupt your bad default patterns and trigger new, positive patterns.

You can change your “default” mental settings and your habits one five-second decision at a time. Those small decisions add up to major changes in who you are, what you feel, and how you live.

Everyday life is full of moments that are scary, uncertain, and difficult. Facing these moments and unlocking the opportunity, magic, and joy in your life requires tremendous courage.

it’s not the big moves that change everything—it’s the smallest ones in your everyday life that do.

It’s a moment when your instincts, values, and goals align, and you move so quickly you don’t have time or a valid reason to stop yourself.

Greatness is not a personality trait. It’s inside all of us and sometimes it’s hard for us to see it.

Courage is a birthright. It is inside each and every one of us.