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

by Mel Robbins

As I used the Rule more and more in my life, I realized that I was making small decisions all day long that held me back. In five seconds flat, I’d decide to stay quiet, to wait, and not to risk it. I’d have an instinct to act and within five seconds my mind would kill it with doubt, excuses, worry, or fear. I was the problem and in five seconds, I could push myself and become the solution. The secret to change had been right in front of my face the entire time—five seconds decisions.

You Are One Decision Away from a Completely Different Life

Doing the work to improve your life is simple, you can do it, and it’s work you want to do—because it’s the most important work that there is. It is the work of learning how to love and trust yourself enough to stop waiting and to start leaning into all the magic, opportunity, and joy that your life, work, and relationships have to offer.

knowing what you need to do isn’t enough to create a change.

Change requires you to do things that feel hard and scary. Change requires courage and confidence—and I was tapped out of both.

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.

When it comes to change, goals, and dreams, you have to bet on yourself. That bet starts with hearing the instinct to change and honoring that instinct with action. I

#5SecondRule made changing my behavior simple. Later I would learn that when you count backwards, you mentally shift the gears in your mind. You interrupt your default thinking and do what psychologists call “assert control.” The counting distracts you from your excuses and focuses your mind on moving in a new direction. When you physically move instead of stopping to think, your physiology changes and your mind falls in line. In researching this book, I discovered that the Rule is (in the language of habit research) a “starting ritual” that activates the prefrontal cortex, helping to change your behavior.

What I discovered is powerful: pushing yourself to take simple actions creates a chain reaction in your confidence and your productivity.

There’s an important concept in psychology put forth by Julian Rotter in 1954. It’s called “locus of control.” The more that you believe that you are in control of your life, your actions and your future, the happier and more successful you’ll be. There’s one thing that is guaranteed to increase your feelings of control over your life: a bias toward action.

Forget motivation; it’s a myth. I don’t know when we all bought into the idea that in order to change you must “feel” eager or “feel” motivated to act. It’s complete garbage. 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. In my world, I call that the power of a push.

The Rule doesn’t make these things easy; it makes them happen. That’s why I describe it as a tool.

There’s nothing more powerful than the feeling of confidence and pride you gain when you keep trudging forward, face life’s challenges head on, and push yourself to change for the better.

Every phase of your life and career will require a different you.

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

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.

Do not look at our heroes in history, business, art, and music and assume that somehow they are different than you. It’s not true.

It’s going to be just you sitting in a meeting at work, standing in your kitchen, riding the subway, looking at your phone, staring at your computer, or thinking about something—and all of sudden, it will happen. Something will go down, and your instincts will come alive. You’ll have an urge to act. Your values and your instincts will tell you what you should do. And your feelings will scream “NO.” That is the push moment. You don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to make a decision in the next five seconds.

Wayne Gretzky quote: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Sometimes there is no next time, no second chance, or no time out. Stop waiting. It’s now or never. When you wait, you aren’t procrastinating. You are doing something more dangerous. You are deliberately convincing yourself “now is not the time.” You are actively working against your dreams.

You may think you’re protecting yourself from judgment, rejection, or upsetting someone, but when you make excuses and talk yourself into waiting, you are limiting your ability to make your dreams come true.

The world rewards those who are courageous enough to stop waiting and start.

Social psychologist Timothy Wilson writes about a psychological intervention, “do good, be good” that dates to Aristotle. Its premise is based on changing people’s behavior first, which in turn changes their self-perception of the kind of person that they are based on the kinds of things that they do.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi applied this concept to human behavior, blaming activation energy as one of the reasons why making change is so hard. He defines activation energy as that “initial huge push of energy that’s required to change”—whether it’s to get a stalled car to move forward or yourself out of a warm bed in the morning.