I just remember feeling this massive sense of despair and my entire life and this is probably the long-winded answer to the first question that you gave me changed with one five-second decision.
And now, what my job is is I teach people around the world the power and the science behind making five-second decisions. And if you are paying attention you will start to notice that there's a five-second window for all of us.
There's a five-second window between the moment that your inner wisdom, you're instincts, your second brain, your gut whatever you want to call it, all of that unique power that's in you, that comes from your DNA that comes from your life experiences that comes from, you know, everything that you've learned in your life situational intelligence.
All of that when it speaks to you and tells you to move to speak to take some form of action, you only got five seconds to move before your mind will talk you out of it.
Right? And you call that the emergency brake, right? Like, yeah. So, what we do is we tend to pull the emergency brake because your mind is designed to do three things your mind by Design, that's just three things that basically regulate your body to keep you alive.
It also when you're sleeping undefined Half of your mind shuts down and the other half catalogs. Everything that happened to you today, so you can have memories. And the third thing that your mind does is it protects your ass and the main way that it does that is it does that by magnifying risk, magnifies any situation or any conversation.
And so, you know, what happened for me is I realized as my life was circling the drain and we're facing bankruptcy and Chris's on the couch. This was not the situation that I wanted. I didn't want my life, to end in divorce.
I didn't want to be in financial ruin, I didn't want to be depressed. I didn't want to be anxious, and here's the truly screwed up thing. I knew what to do to fix it.
See, this is the Trap that most of us are in. Most of us know what we could do to change things for the better and we spend our time and our energy talking ourselves out of doing those things. And the other thing that I convince people of because this is so true, it's the littlest stuff.
The little things make all the difference, and I could talk in hours with you explaining the science of confidence and explaining the science of risk and explaining the science behind courage, and explaining habit loops and how they get encoded in your brain.
You don't need to know any of that because you're not applying for a Ph.D. in Psychology. I have done the work and what I know is that true change comes down to five-second windows, That moment that, you know, you need to do something that feels slightly uncomfortable.
And your resignation, your excuses your self-doubts, start cranking up in your head. You gotta move, you have to move and so what happened for me is I invented a hack, a brain hack. The Stupidest thing in the world. It turns out that it's actually tremendously profound and Powerful at a neurological level and at a scientific and a psychological level.
When I invented it, I had no clue what I had invented and it took me about three years from the moment that I invented it. To actually realize that holy s***. I think I've discovered the secret to changing anything.
And what was it? So I called it the five-second rule because I never intended to talk about it, it was a cheat to beat the alarm clock.
Here's how it goes. The alarm rings in the morning most of us don't want to get out of bed, right? But we know we should. So I would go five, four, three, two, one.
The moment, the alarm ring four, three, two one. Just like NASA what they do? They count down to launch a rocket ship. And the counting backward kind of shut my mind off, then suddenly at one, I would stand up.
And I would use this every single morning to get out of bed. Nine years later, I still use it every single morning to get out of bed. Some Behavior you can learn and automate other stuff that you don't like doing you're gonna always have to push yourself, that's just how it is.
And I noticed two things I started to use it, I noticed that window that I'd be lying in bed and I'd have the knowledge that I should get up, but in my body, I wouldn't feel it.
And as I lied in bed and you can try this tomorrow morning set your alarm early earlier than you normally do. The alarm will go off and your mind knows that you said, you would get up your mind, has that wisdom, your gut has that wisdom. It's holding on to it and then, it starts to kind of nudge you with the little guilt.
And then what will happen is all of sudden, you'll start talking yourself out of doing this. It the thing you said you would do. Yeah, it's too cold around, too.
And it happens in less than five seconds. And so what I know is that those are two different parts of your brain going at once and if you go five, four, three, two, one, you interrupt the habit of self-doubt and habit of talking yourself out of it and shutting down the part of the brain that actually minimizes your power and you awaken the part of the brain. That is active and functional MRI's when you're trying to change.
And so all you need to know to change anything is A, you're never gonna feel like it. You're never going to feel ready to start that business. You're never going to feel ready to have that hard conversation. You're never going to feel like getting out of bed, you're never gonna feel like it's a good idea to apply for that promotion.
We're designed to stay comfortable and safe. So if you know that you're A, never gonna feel like it and B that no one's coming. It's up to you. You're not a kid anymore. I'm dead serious about this like most a lot.
So many of you are waiting to be picked by who are you making the most of your life? The answer is yes if you pay attention to what you do in five-second windows, are you the kind of person that when you're instincts come alive, and they want to nudge you to go talk to that cute gal, across the way or raise your hand in a meeting and share that idea?
Are you the kind of person that pushes yourself to step into that or do you pull back? That's the power of a five-second decision because you can't, you can't choose how you feel, you can't.
Yeah. Maybe you can go and become a Buddhist monk and Meditate for four months and get full control of your physiology. And yeah, yeah technically you can control how you feel but you and I can't we got a job we got kids we’ve got to raise that's not possible.
So you can do something else you can actually disregard the feelings. You can become the kind of person that is so in tune with the values that you have and what you actually want. That when feelings rise up, you can choose to act however you want, despite them.
Even if you're tired, you can still go to the gym. Even if you're annoyed with your spouse, you can still speak in a manner, that's loving. Even if you don't feel like doing that hard work you can still push yourself to do it. You are feelings aren't a choice, your behavior and your thoughts are always a choice.
Yeah, so this is probably the category of emotional intelligence I think it's both emotional intelligence and it is the skill that nobody practices which is self-monitoring Right.
So the greatest capacity, I believe in the next 10 years for people, particularly as technology accelerates is, do you have the ability to focus on what matters, and do you have control over your thoughts and actions?
And so, you know, emotional intelligence yes. I tend to think about emotional intelligence more about reading other people and kind of understanding who you are and how you are.
This to me all took it a step further because I was always a big EQ person and the emotional intelligence, 2.0 books, and loved that stuff. Even when my life was in a train wreck, had no idea how to apply it. And you know that's the other thing is that at the end of the day, what's missing for most of us is tools.
So, you know, a lot of people that Mainline is personal development content have been reading about making changes for 10 years, but they don't do it.
How did you get out of the train wreck by the way? The five-second rule. So, but you can't take those five seconds to the bank, right? Like so how'd you do it? Like, break it down.
What are you gonna do, what would you do if you had a restaurant that was failing? Probably figure out how to cut bait or so the assets or pivot or flip it or do something?
Yes and all those things require you to have conversations, they require you to have done the research, they require you to walk into a bank, you require you to renegotiate things with your landlord, you have the answers up here do you have the courage and the tool to push yourself do those things that are terrifying.
It's easier to tell yourself. Oh, that's not gonna work. So I might as well not even try it. You have no idea. Yes. And so what happened is once I started using it to get out of bed on time. You know five, four, three, two, one get up. I started to notice holy cow all day long they're these five-second Windows, where, I know what I should be doing.
Maybe I should use this stupid thing to take control of my head and push myself to do those things too. And so I went from sleeping in and hitting the snooze alarm three times four times, five times a day to getting up on time getting to the gym.
Not having four Manhattans a night speaking to Chris differently, instead of complaining about the fact that I had lost the television show with fox, actually picking up the phone and cold calling for auditions. Something that I was terrified to do and slowly, but surely because I was changing my five seconds at a time.
Making decisions that scared me making decisions that I was, I was convinced weren't gonna work, I was doing it anyway. I started to change. I became the kind of person that stopped thinking about stuff and complaining about stuff and I became the kind of person that I always had wanted to be the kind of person that makes things happen.
I saw myself changing, and what happens is, you know, you can follow anybody's step by step by step program. You can and it might work a lot. Most of them do every diet will work.
The problem is we don't go in internal first. You cannot change your life unless you go inside first, you figure out who you are, what your own wisdom is telling you to do and you start to actually believe it and follow it.
Because if you don't develop simply the ability to get up, when you said you would, to eat what you said, you would to, you know, exercise because you said you would, to talk in a way to your kids that's patient because you said you would, you will never have the self-confidence to succeed in any environment you won’t
No comments: