How To Take Control Of Your Brain and Get Better Every Day 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
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 they’re 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
an 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
you’ll hear people talk about 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 priority 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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