The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 58 - How To Improve your Life in 5 Seconds: Mel Robbins

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. This week, I’ve chosen a section from my conversation with Mel Robbins. Mel is the author of The Five Second Rule, a business woman, a life coach, and a sensation in the world of self improvement. At a point in her life Mel was really struggling with huge amounts of depression, anxiety, and fear, making it extremely difficult for her to get out of bed in the morning and generally just be present in her life. This moment describes the method that has changed Mel’s mindset to become who she is today. Mel got herself out of her dark side which saw her marinating in fear and anxiety, using her Five Second Rule. The rule was born from that window of hesitation that comes into our minds before we make a decision, a decision that could define your whole life. Inside that window lives fear, anxiety, procrastination and imposter syndrome, so we create patterns of feeling, patterns of behaviour, and patterns of thinking that tempt us to steer away from making that decision. It can be a dangerous cycle getting stuck in these broken patterns of denial so Mel brings this down to one fundamental method. The Five Second rule works because of its simplicity. You make yourself a promise, you count backwards - 5,4,3,2,1 then you do it. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/94zhHbl49pb Mel - https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/?hl=en https://twitter.com/melrobbins?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. This five second rule, you released the book, I think, 2017 called The Five-Second Rule. And it's all about, you know, well, you tell me what it's about, where it came from. I know there was a rocket, you're watching a rocket on TV. And that was a little bit of the initial inspiration.

But where did this come from and what is it? Well, so, you know, I think I alluded to earlier that it seems like my version of personal development requires me to fall into a hole or dig one. And then I realize nobody's coming to rescue me. And if I want to get out of the hole, I'm going to need to build a freaking ladder. And so at the age of 40, I found myself in a place that I just never envisioned I would be. And that is, I had, my husband and I had three kids under the age of 10. And I was unemployed. And my husband had been in the restaurant business with his best friend and the housing crisis hit, especially hit in the United States. And we found ourselves 800 grand in debt because we had secured the restaurant

business like complete morons with our kids' college fund and our house and every credit card and the home equity line and the cars and everything. And that's great when your business is working. It's absolutely terrifying when it's not. And so I would wake up every morning, just pinned to the bed with anxiety. And I became somebody that I barely recognized. I was screaming at Chris. I was drinking myself into the ground. I, the kids were missing the bus every day. I didn't have a job. I was hiding from my friends. I hadn't told my family what was going on. And, you know, the thing that's interesting about being stuck in life is that the fact is, you know what you need to do. That's the easy part.

And if you don't know what you need to do to improve the situation, then Google it. There's approximately a bazillion videos out there of people like you that have been in the exact same situation. They will walk you through how to, there are books you can buy, there are courses, the what you need to do is out there. It's the how. How the fuck do you make yourself do what you need to do when you are scared or overwhelmed or anxious or hopeless or depressed or any of the stuff that happens to you as a human? That's the hundred million dollar question. And at the time, I didn't have the answer. I knew I needed to look for a job. I knew I needed to stop streaming at Chris. I knew I needed to get the kids on the bus. I knew I needed to ask for help. I wasn't doing any of those things.

I was stuck in broken patterns and I didn't know any of the things that we're talking about right now. But one night, you know, I was sitting there and I was watching TV and I was telling myself, tomorrow morning, it's gotta be the new you. I was giving myself that lame pep talk, like, Mel, you've gotta stop drinking. You have gotta be nice to Chris.

You've got to pull your shit together. You gotta look for a job. And by God, woman, when that alarm rings, you cannot lay there like a human pot roast marinating in fear and staring at the ceiling. You have got to get out of bed, woman. And then all of a sudden, this is divine intervention. The rocket ship launches across a television screen, Stephen,

and I say, that's it. That's it. Tomorrow morning, when the alarm goes off, Mel Robbins, you're going to launch yourself out of bed like a rocket ship. You're going to move sobins, you're going to launch yourself out of bed like a rocket ship. You're going to move so fast, you're not going to be in that bed when that anxiety hits. Now, it was either God or bourbon. One of those two things gave me the idea because it sounds dumb. Okay, Mel, you're going to beat anxiety by moving fast. That sounds

great. Well, the very next morning, it was a Tuesday in February outside of Boston, Massachusetts in 2008. The alarm went off. And I think a lot about this moment. Because if I hadn't done what I did that morning, my life would have gone in a totally different direction. I'd probably be divorced. I'd probably be divorced. I'd probably be an alcoholic. My family would be torn apart. No idea what I'd be doing for a living or where I would be.

And I profoundly believe that you are one decision away from a different life. And that happened to me on a February morning in 2008. The alarm rang. And as soon as the alarm rang, I remembered the idea of launching myself out of bed. And then I did what psychologists call a bias towards thinking.

And this window opens up when you start to think about what you need to do instead of doing what you need to do. It's this window of hesitation that's about five seconds long. A window of hesitation that anxiety and procrastination and fear and imposter syndrome and overwhelm, all patterns of thinking, all patterns of feeling, all patterns of behavior that get triggered in this five-second window of thinking about what you need to do. Because it's in the thinking that you go from being present to all the patterns kicking in and the coping mechanisms that you have. And so for whatever reason, I started to think about getting up and all the shit started to come in.

I don't feel like it. How's it going to help? I don't want to. For whatever reason, I just started counting backwards. Five, four, three, two, one. And I stood up. And I used it the next morning and the next morning. And by the third morning, I was kind of freaked out

because I'm like, okay, this is working. This is weird. And I said, Mel, I made myself a promise. If at any moment you know what you need to do, but you don't feel like it, just count backwards and let's just see what happens. And so I started using it, Steve, in this little count backwards technique,

five, four, three, two, one. No idea why it's working, by the way. In any moment, I'd see Chris, I'd want to count five, four, three, two, one. All of moment, I'd see Chris, I'd want to kill him. Five, four, three, two, one. All of a sudden I'm calm. I can speak to him from a more supportive place. Kids are irritating.

Five, four, three, two, one. Take a breath. And now I can be the mom that I know I want to be. Five, four, three, two, one. I'm going out the door to exercise. Five, four, three, two, one. I'm picking up the phone and I'm networking. Five, four, three, two, one.

I'm picking up the phone and calling my parents and asking for help. And slowly but surely, one decision at a time using the five-second rule. And the five-second rule is very simple. The moment you have an instinct to move, you got to do it within five seconds or your brain will kill it. And counting backwards is critical.

I now know why it works. When you count backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, you interrupt habit loops stored in your basal ganglia. And the counting backwards requires focus. So it awakens this sucker right here, your prefrontal cortex. It's referred to as a starting ritual in habit research, a cheat code for your brain.

And basically I used it in secret for three years because I mean, what am I gonna do? Tell people you can count to five and you change years because, I mean, what am I going to do? Tell people you can count to five and you change your life? I mean, it sounds ridiculous. Plus, I was just trying to survive. I'm trying to, like, find a job and save my marriage and help my husband and make sure my kids are okay and start to pay our bills and make the ends meet.

And that's what I was doing. And one thing led to another and word got out about it and people started to write to me about it. And it has now gone on to change the lives of millions of people. We know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from attempting suicide by counting backwards,

five, four, three, two, one. When I had a daytime talk show, an entire wing of nurses from an inpatient unit at a psychiatric hospital in Philadelphia came to my talk show and explained to me after the show that of all the tools that they have, when they discharge somebody from an inpatient commitment, that the five second rule is the most effective thing that they have, except for medication, obviously, but it's the most effective thing that they have because it's simple and you can remember it and anybody can use it and it works. And I think we make a huge mistake in life. We make the mistake of believing that because our problems are big

or because our dreams are so big, that somehow the solution to achieving those dreams or to solving those problems must be enormous too. When in truth, it's the opposite. The larger the problem, the smaller the solution. The larger the problem, the smaller the solution. The bigger the dream, the smaller the actions are that you need to start taking.