Use This One Trick To Take Control Of Your Brain Mel Robbins
there are so many people in the world
and and you know you may be watching
this right now
and you have these incredible ideas and
what you think is missing is motivation
and that’s not true
because the way that our minds are wired
and the fact about human beings is that
we are not designed to do things that
are uncomfortable or scary or difficult
our brains are designed to protect us
from those things because our brains are
trying to keep us alive and in order to
change in order to build a business in
order to be the best parent the best
spouse to do all those things that you
know you want to do with your life with
your work with your dreams you’re going
to have to do things that are difficult
uncertain or scary which sets up this
problem for all of us
you’re never going to feel like it
for me one of the hardest things to
figure out was why is it so
hard
to do the little things
that would improve my life
and what i’ve come to realize and what
we’ll talk a lot about today is that the
way that our minds are designed
is our minds are designed to stop you
at all costs from doing anything
that might
hurt you
and the way that that that that this all
happens is it all starts with something
super subtle
that none of us ever catch
and that is with this habit that all of
us have that nobody’s talking about
we all have a habit
of hesitating
we have an idea
you’re sitting in a meeting
you have this incredible idea and
instead of just
you know saying it
you stop and you hesitate
now what none of us realize is that when
you hesitate just that moment that micro
moment that small hesitation it sends a
stress signal to your brain
it wakes your brain up and your brain
all of a sudden goes oh wait a minute
wait why is he hesitating he didn’t
hesitate when he put on his killer spiky
sneakers he didn’t hesitate with the uh
really cool track pants he didn’t
hesitate with the nasa t-shirt now he’s
hesitating to talk something must be up
so then your brain goes to work to
protect you
it has a million different ways to
protect you one of them is called the
spotlight effect it’s a known phenomenon
where your brain magnifies risk why to
pull you away from something that it
perceives to be a problem
and so
you can truly
trace every single problem or complaint
in your life to silence and hesitation
those are decisions and what i do and
what’s changed my life is waking up and
realizing that i’m never going to feel
like doing the things that are tough for
difficult or uncertain or scary or new
so i need to stop waiting until i feel
like it and number two
i am one decision away from a totally
different marriage
a totally different life a totally
different job a totally different income
a totally different
uh relationship with my kids
your life comes down to your decisions
and if you change your decisions you
will change everything
in the scheme of life hitting the snooze
button is not that big of a deal but
here’s the thing about life none of us
wake up and say today is the day i
destroy my life
what we do is we
kind of check out because
it feels overwhelming
or we check out because we’re afraid or
we check out because we start listening
to self-doubt and then we make these
teeny tiny decisions
all day long and we don’t even realize
it
decision to not get up on time a
decision to not eat the right thing a
decision to snap at your kids a decision
to
not speak in a meeting a decision to not
look for a job a decision to not deal
with your finances a decision to not
call your parent like whatever it is
all day long these tiny decisions that
take you so far off track
and then you wake up like i did and you
you look at your life and you think how
the hell did i get here
and more importantly how do you get back
over there
and you have no idea
you get trapped in what i call the
knowledge action gap you know what to do
but you can’t seem to make yourself do
it right
i mean every one of us is one google
search away from a list of instructions
that if you follow any of them
it will change your life
but how do you get out of your head
and stop thinking about what you need to
do and actually do it
instead of isolating yourself pick up
the phone and call a friend
get yourself out into the woods and go
for a walk start running again like all
these little things that i was capable
of but i couldn’t get out of here
could not get out of here and if if
you’re stuck that’s the problem the
problem is you’re you’re in your head
you’re thinking
when you set goals when you have an
intention on something that you want to
change about your life
your brain helps you what it does is it
opens up a checklist
and then your brain goes to work trying
to remind you
of that intention that you set and it’s
really important to develop the skill
and i say that word purposefully the
skill
of knowing how to hear that inner wisdom
and that intention kicking in
and leaning into it quickly
and i think most people that are
miserable
or that are that are really like dying
to be great and dying to have more we
want to change we want to
live a better life we want to create
more for our families we want to be
happier
the the desire is there
again it’s about how do you go from
knowledge to action so the first thing
in the story that’s important is
realizing that the answer was in me
every human being has a five second
window might even be shorter
for you
you have about a five second window in
which you can move from idea to action
before your brain kicks into full gear
and sabotages
any change in behavior
because remember your brain is wired to
stop you from doing things that are
uncomfortable or uncertain or scary
it’s your job to learn how to move from
those ideas that could change everything
into acting on them
because when you understand the power of
a five-second decision and you
understand that you always have a choice
to go from autopilot to decision maker
everything in your life will change you
will be a different negotiator you will
be different in sales you will be
unstoppable in the gym because you will
realize the amount of garbage that you
put in the way of your hopes of your
dreams of your potential of your
confidence of your courage
everything comes down to the decisions
that you make
we all know what to do
none of us know how to make ourselves do
it
so um
i started researching it why does
something so stupid work
why why does something so silly create
such powerful and profound change well
here’s why
the rule is a form of metacognition
metacognition is a fancy pants terms
that means something real simple
you can outsmart your own brain
in furtherance of goals
there are tricks that you can use that
actually outsmart the tricks your brain
plays on you
in furtherance of a higher purpose we
all know this you can you can
restrain yourself
if uh
you’re in a situation that calls for it
you can jump into a raging river to save
your dog or your kid
you can direct yourself in ways
if it’s important to you
and so the rule what it does is it does
something really remarkable
when you count backwards five four three
two one
what you’re actually doing
is you’re interrupting what researchers
call habit loops
that get encoded as as closed-loop
patterns in your basal ganglia that’s
the part of the brain where your
feelings where your emotions every habit
that you have which is nothing more than
behavior that you repeat that you don’t
even think about and so when you go five
four three two one it interrupts what’s
going on here that’s spinning without
you thinking and it moves and awakens
your prefrontal cortex
so when you hit one
your habit has been interrupted so
you’ve interrupted self-doubt you’ve
interrupted maybe snapping at your kids
you’ve interrupted the desire to grab
for a drink you’ve also by counting
backwards
done in action
it’s awakened your prefrontal cortex
that is the part of the brain that you
need that’s awake
when you’re changing behavior when
you’re learning new things when you hit
one it’s also a prompt
so in the language of research uh you’ll
hear people talk about um starting
rituals
that is that is something that’s proven
to help you learn a new habit the five
second rule when you repeat it becomes a
starting ritual that triggers you to act
with confidence it triggers you that
this is a moment for courage that
triggers you to shift gears and because
you’ve also done the manual work of
awakening the part of the brain that you
need to change
you’ve set yourself up for success it
doesn’t work if you count up because you
can keep going and also counting up
doesn’t require focus
if you count backwards five four three
two one
it again awakens the prefrontal cortex
and it prompts you to move
when you start to use it and then you
read about it you’ll see that that it’s
being used all over the place they use
it in the armed services in order to
align troops and get them to start an
exercise they use it at elementary
schools five four three two one at big
assemblies to get a huge room full of
kids stop talking simple and interesting
example yeah because it requires you to
focus
it’s not a habit it will become a habit
that prompts you to have confidence and
courage but in the beginning it
interrupts patterns of behavior that you
do on autopilot it helps you assert
control and it teaches you how to become
the kind of person that moves from
thinking about something to actually
doing it
change comes down to five second
decisions and this is why the five
second rule is is important for
everybody to know
it’s your job to push yourself
and i don’t care if you’re dr martin
luther king jr or your michelangelo or
your lin-manuel miranda who wrote
hamilton you will struggle with
self-doubt
and everybody that you admire everybody
and the list is the same prairie oh
oprah winfrey and i want to be like you
know tom and i want to be like uh you
know
branson and i want to be like jay-z and
i want like everybody’s listeners bill
gates and do you know what those people
do
they do not have the habit of hesitating
they trust themselves
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