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 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.

you’ve been sleepwalking through life for a long 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.

Counting and moving are actions. By teaching yourself to take action when normally you’d stop yourself by thinking, you can create remarkable change. Counting backwards does a few important things simultaneously: It distracts you from your worries, it focuses your attention on what you need to do, it prompts you to act, and it interrupts the habits of hesitating, overthinking, and holding yourself back.

You can use the Rule to stop the barrage of negative thoughts and endless worries that weigh you down. You can also break the habit of anxiety and beat any fear. When you take control of your mind, you’ll be able to think about things that bring you joy instead of focusing on the negative.

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

Waiting will only make it worse. When you sit with fear and uncertainty your mind makes it expand; it’s called “the spotlight effect” and it’s one of the many tricks your brain plays in an attempt to keep you “safe.”

Life is not a one-and-done sort of deal. You’ve got to work for what you want. Do you know the game Angry Birds? Rovio, the brand that created the game, launched 51 unsuccessful games before they developed Angry Birds. How about The Avengers

You can’t control how you feel. But you can always choose how you act.

“Do good, be good.” Change your behavior first because when you do, you change how you perceive yourself.

lot of us have a “just don’t feel like it” attitude in life.

Procrastination is not a form of laziness at all. It’s a coping mechanism for stress.

Procrastination is “a subconscious desire to feel good right now” so you can feel a little stress relief.

you need to forgive yourself for procrastinating.

the brain remembers unfinished tasks better than finished ones.

Confidence is a skill I’ve built over the years by practicing acts of everyday courage.

Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and the awful, it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living. Heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.

More than any other change, ending your habit of worrying will create the single biggest

positive impact in your life.

Another thing that has surprised me about worry is just how subtle it is and how fast it can seize control of you.

“Nothing” in life is perfect. Nothing at all.

When you tell a person to calm down, you are asking someone to go from 60 mph to 0 mph. It’s like trying to stop a freight train by throwing a boulder in front of it; it’ll jump the tracks.

Reframing your anxiety as excitement really works.

“If, Then” planning. It’s a way to keep yourself in control by creating a backup plan in

advance. Plan A is not to get nervous.

Confidence just means that you believe in yourself, your ideas, and your capabilities. Anyone can learn how to become more confident. It’s not a personality trait. It’s a skill.

confidence is created by the small things you do every single day that build trust in yourself.

Small things are not small at all. They are the most important things of all.

until you practice it. That’s why I keep saying you must “practice” acts of everyday courage.

there is no expiration date on discovering and expressing the power of you.

There is no right time to have the conversation, ask the hard questions, say “I love you,” or take the time to truly listen. There is only right now. Sometimes it’s not merely a hard question that you need to ask. It’s actually ending the silence between you.

Yes, you can move mountains. Whatever is happening right now, this is it. This is your life. And it’s not going to begin again. You can’t change the past, but in five seconds you can change your future.