چگونه قانون 5 ثانیه را کشف کردم؟

CHAPTER TWO

HOW I DISCOVERED THE 5 SECOND RULE

So this all started in 2009. I was 41 years old and, the truth is, I was facing some major problems with money, with work, and definitely in my marriage. Now it was so bad that as soon as I woke up every morning, you know what I felt? I felt dread, fear, overwhelm.

Have you ever felt that way? The moment alarm goes off, you just can not fathom how the hell you’re gonna get through the day. It is the worst. The alarm rings and you just don’t wanna get up. You can’t believe that this is your life. Or, how about this one, you ever do this? You know how you lie awake at night and your head is spinning and you can’t sleep because all you can do is worry and think about all your problems.

Well, that was me. 2009, that was me. For months, I just felt so overwhelmed by the problems that my husband and I had that I just… getting out of bed? Holly cow! When the alarm rang at 6 o’clock, I would just lie there. That was the kiss of death. The first thing I would think about is the lien on our house. And then I would think about my negative account balance and wonder how the hell I was gonna buy groceries today. I think about being unemployed, how much I resented my husband, the position that we were in and just how embarrassed and ashamed and stuck I was and then, I’d hit the snooze button. Not once, but over and over and over again. Now look, in the beginning hitting the snooze button, not that big of a deal, but as is the case with every bad habit that we have, if they go unchecked over time, what happens? A snowball into a much bigger problem that impacts everything and you know in my case the snooze button… Boy if I hit that sucker two three times in a morning, you know what would happen? I mean by the time I finally got up I was so behind the ball, the kids had missed the buss, I mean we were late for everything. I felt like it was failing before I even got out of my bedroom. And then I spent most of my days tired, running late and completely overwhelmed. You know what’s crazy is I don’t even know how this all started. I don’t remember when things went from okay to horrible. I just remember feeling so damn defeated all the time.

Let me tell you a little bit more about what had happened. So my career, totally in the gutter. I had spent the last 12 years changing careers. I mean, I had changed careers so many times that I felt like I was developing multiple personalities. I graduated from law school and started my career as a public defender. I worked for the legal aid, criminal defense Society in New York City and that was a great job. I really liked that. And then I met Chris and we got married and I left my job as a public defender because we were gonna move to Boston so that Chris could pursue his MBA. Now in Boston, I couldn’t work for the public defender’s office in Boston because I was not admitted to the mass bar so the only job that I could find as a lawyer was one working in a large law firm. Well, I worked these crazy hours in this law firm in downtown Boston. I would do nothing but research papers and write briefs and I hated every single second of it. It was nothing like what it was like to be a public defender where you are in court all day. Suddenly, my life changed. I went from being in court and having clients and having a lot of control and freedom over my time and my day and I felt really… I felt like I had a purpose. I felt like I was doing something that mattered. Now I just sat in an office building and was told what to do and I was miserable, all the time.

And when our first daughter was born, we have three kids, but when Sawyer who is now 17 was born, I use my maternity leave to look for a new job. I mean, that’s how much I hated my job. I did not want to go back after maternity leave and I ended up landing the Boston startup scene, thankfully. I worked for several tech startups during those years and it was a lot of fun. I was absolutely a lot of fun and I learned a lot, but I never felt like the software scene or technology was really the right fit for me. Have you ever felt that way? Where like you’re in a job and it’s fine, but you’re really don’t feel like it’s the right fit. It kind of haunted me. So I hired a coach to help me figure out what I should do with my life. And working with a coach led me to want to become one. So like a lot of people when I finally discovered what I wanted to do… I would go to my job all day then I would get home, I’d focus on the kids, I’d focus on Chris and then at night I was studying. I was studying so that I could learn the business of coaching and get the certification that I needed and eventually, as it does when you do the work, I launched a coaching business. And the truth is, I loved it, absolutely loved it. And I probably would still be doing it if the media hadn’t called.

Now, my media career began as a total fluke. Inc magazine published an article featuring my coaching business in an article that was all about life and business coaching, and I thought this is kind of funny. I thought this is gonna be amazing. Inc magazine is gonna write this article about me and all the clients are gonna start to calling and not a single one. Complete crickets on the phone but I did get one phone call because of the article and it was an executive at CNBC who saw it and she called and that led to a ton of meetings and lots of different tryouts and I landed at the end of, I don’t know 4-5 months of all kinds of auditions and tryouts, what they call a development deal. And it was a development deal with ABC. And I also landed a call in radio show with serious satellite radio. Now, here’s the deal: it sounds really fancy, right? Oh, Mel’s got a development deal with ABC. oh, She’s got a call in a radio show, that’s serious. She must be on her way. That’s incredible. let me tell you the truth about the media business because I was very surprised to learn this. Not being in the media business, you have a lot of opinions about what you think the media businesses is. I was very surprised to learn, for example, that most development deals, even those with big fancy networks pay next to nothing and radio, it pays actually less than that.

It pays nothing. So in reality I was a mom of three, driving back and forth to New York City for all of these meetings and to do the radio show and to do stuff with ABC. I wasn’t getting paid. I was sleeping on kid’s couches, and I was coaching clients on the side in order to make all the ends meet. And I started to lean too much on friends and family to fill in the childcare gaps and do whatever it is that I could do to just make it all work. It was, kind of like, have you ever seen that image of, I remember this image from, like a entertainment tonight kinda show, there was a guy that used to do this act where there would be these polls on a table and of all these plates spinning. I literally, like 20 plates spinning at once. I felt like my entire life was like that. Another good image of what life was like, you know when you look at a dock and they look like they’re super smooth on the surface, but there’re a little, there’re a little feeder moving like a million miles an hour into the water but you can’t see it, that’s basically how I felt.

So it sounds like life is going really good, it’s just busy. And the truth is, it was. So, you know, this kind of went on for a couple of years and then I got my big break. I was cast to host a reality show for Fox. You know, I thought I was big time. Let me tell you, I thought, oh man. I had all these visions that suddenly, suddenly everything is going to be solved. I’m go to become a reality TV star. I’m gonna make millions of dollars. Chris doesn’t have to work. We’re gonna be set for life. This is going to be amazing. Let me tell you what it was. It was one giant joke. I got cast to host a show called someone’s gotta go and this show was, you know when we first cast the show, I was told that it was good to be a business makeover show so I was gonna be like Supernanny or Gordon Ramsay going in and fixing small businesses and then after I got cast for the show and I show up in Los Angeles to shoot, they’ve made what they call a format change and I’m no longer going to be fixing small businesses, I’m gonna be firing people on national television from real jobs and the people that are on the show have no idea that this is what’s about to happen. The show was called someone’s gotta go. We shot a few episodes. I know you’re sitting there thinking, wait a minute, how does that work? You fire people from real jobs on tell, that sounds disgusting. I agree.

Have you ever had one of those, those moments in your life where you feel like you’ve just made an awful decision? You’re either with the wrong person. You took the wrong job and start it. I just had this huge pit in my stomach because I knew, knew, knew, knew that this was so wrong. Because I am not about shaming people, I’m about helping people. I even remember calling my agent after we shot the first show and say you gotta get me out of this. This thing is horrible. This is like the meanest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. These people on the show are hyperventilating. There’s sobbing. I can’t do this to, to any… I can’t do this. And he said I’m sorry you’re stuck in a contract. And then I said well then, get me some Xanax because I don’t know how the hell I’m gonna get through the next taping. And he said I can’t get that for you either, I’m not a doctor, I’m sorry. So I shot the second one. Again, I shouldn’t have. I absolutely shouldn’t have, but I felt really cornered because I had given up everything, my coaching practice, the radio, everything, to tape on this show. Well, when the second episode was, was shot basically the law department at Fox took a look at it and said we can’t air this, so they tabled the show and and I, I was so happy. I thought, have I dodged a bullet. That’s absolutely amazing. We are not going to shoot this show. This is fantastic. I, I have saved my reputation, but there was one wrinkle that I was not thinking through and that is that I had signed a contract with Fox. And I only got paid after we shot the show. And so here I was stuck in a contract for a year that prevented me from doing anything in the media business, anything at all. Until Fox figured out what they wanted to do with the show.

So I found myself at the age of 41 completely, now unemployed and unemployable. I had burned the bridge of the law firm. I didn’t have a license to practice in Massachusetts, my self-confidence was in the gutter and I sure as hell didn’t feel comfortable now going back to coaching people when my own life had now ended up in a complete, just dead end. And there is also something else going on and that is that my husband’s restaurant business was going under and it was going under very quickly. Now let me tell you little bit about that, I mean, my husband had started a thin crust pizza restaurant with his best friend in the Boston area right after he finished his MBA. And in the beginning, things were amazing. I mean, the first location was an absolute homerun. The company won the best of Boston from Boston magazine, so we thought, oh, this is gonna be incredible, we have a, we have homerun here. We have a sure, sure thing. They also won multiple regional awards and you know, the fact is, the pizza was absolutely fantastic. And then they opened up a second restaurant in a different location. This second one was a little bit larger than the first one and at the same time, because a huge grocery store chain had encourage them to do so, they also decided to take on a wholesale operation. Now on the outside with one really busy restaurant and a brand-new wholesale operation in the second restaurant that’s even bigger, from the outside it looked like business was booming but the fact is on the balance sheet, the wheels were starting to come off.

You see, they had expanded too quickly. And the second location, not a good one. Within eight months, it was very very clear that it was gonna have to be shut down. And the wholesale business, while he was doing okay. It needed cash to grow. I mean it was sucking wind and that meant it was sucking all of the cash out of the business and it was mostly the first restaurant that was creating all the cash to begin with. Now let me tell you, things suddenly went from feeling like, wow my husband’s running a restaurant business and I’m shoot in the show and wow, this is amazing, our dreams are coming true; it went from that to holy shitt, what is going on? What do you mean, you’re closing down that restaurant? What do you mean the wholesale business? What do you mean I just lost the show and I and I and I can’t can’t get another job. What, what’s going on? And here’s the other thing, like a lot of small business owners, we had poured our entire home equity line into that business. We had poured the kids’ college savings into that business and it was disappearing before our eyes. We had zero zero left in the bank. The home equity line, fully tapped out and there were weeks, even months that went by, where Chris was just, he just wasn’t getting paid. There was no money in the business. And that’s when the lien started to the house. And the phone started to ring. And every time he picked it up, it was a collection’s call. So of course you unplug the phone. I mean that’s what you do when you… That’s all the financial people tell you, right? Unplug the phone when…. That will take care of the calls, but it doesn’t take care of the financial problem, okay?

So with me how to work and Chris’s business struggling, the financial pressure mounted. Every day in the mailbox scary letters from attorneys. And even though I was an attorney and I know it’s a bunch of like hot air when you’re getting one of those it’s terrifying. The checks constantly bouncing, constantly. Every time I would go to the grocery store, it would literally feel like, I don’t know, I don’t even know what, what to compare it to. You’d stand there as the items were scanning, I’d be feeling the panic rise because I was pretty sure, certain actually, that the check card that I had would not be clearing. That I did not have enough money for the groceries that were going down that little conveyor belt. But I did have an excuse ready and that was this, I would do this, I was a master at it: Oh that’s weird, it just worked at the gas station. That was my excuse every time the card was declined.

You know at one point my dad actually sent us money to cover the mortgage and I remember feeling this weird mix of feeling grateful, grateful that he was helping us and at the same time I felt so, fucking ashamed of myself. That I had three kids and was 41 and was literally gonna lose it all. And in the other thing that was really difficult about this is that because it was a business that was public and because my ego at the time was still big, I just felt so much pressure to keep up the appearances. And on top of that so many friends and family members had invested in the restaurant wholesale business. And Jonathan and Chris were trying so hard, they were working around the clock to save it. And so I felt this obligation and you know it was really important that I kept an upbeat outside appearance because they were going to save it. In fact, they ultimately did save the restaurant business and go on to open up a bunch more and then eventually sell it off, but at the time, it sure did not feel like that was going to happen. You know I would, I would tell everybody it was fine but on the inside, I was overwhelmed, I was embarrassed. I was afraid and then on top of all of this, you know what this kind of shitt does to a marriage? Holy cow! It was tearing Chris and I apart. I mean we had never fought like this before. As far as I was concerned, it was the restaurants, the restaurants were to blame. As far as Chris was concerned, it was my media career. And the fact that I had to chase this dream, and for years I got paid next to nothing doing radio, and the sacrifices that we all made. And now I was in a deadend. I mean, it was, it was just endless, the pressure, the fighting.

And you know here’s the thing, you may be dealing with stuff that’s a hell of a lot more serious than bankruptcy, I get it. But no matter how bad your life can seem, you can always make it worse. And I know I did. I drank way too much. I was jealous. I was jealous all the time. I was jealous of friends who didn’t have to work. I was jealous of friends whose husbands made a lot of money. I was jealous of people that were happy in their careers. Any time I drove past the house that was having any kind of work done on it, I was jealous. Each is consue me. I was beachy. I was judgmental. And our problems seemed so big that I convince myself that there’s nothing I could do nothing. Well, I could blame Chris, that I did very well, but you know, nothing I could do. Now in hindsight, hindsight’s wonderful isn’t it? Because from when looking back you can, you can completely see what you should’ve been doing. I can see that it was just easier. It’s a hell of a lot easier to feel sorry for yourself. It’s a heck of a lot easier to blame other people. It’s easier to be jealous, so much easier than taking a look in the mirror and pulling yourself together which is exactly what I needed to do. The best way to describe how I felt was trapped. I felt trapped by my life. I felt trapped by the decisions I had made. I felt trapped by our money problems and I felt trapped in a struggle with myself.

And here’s where the rubber meets the road. I knew what I should be doing or could be doing to make things better. I knew and so do you. We all know what we should or could be doing to improve things. But here’s the deal, I couldn’t make myself do it. I just couldn’t and what’s even more frustrating, they were small stuff I had to do, small. I bet if you’re listening to the story, you’re probably thinking what the hell is wrong with you? Look for a job. What the hell is wrong with you? Stop blaming your husband. When it’s not your problems, it’s really easy to fix them. When you’re the one struggling with yourself, it can seem like you’re trying to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. And look, I get it. I didn’t have to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I just had to get up on time. That’s it. I had to be nicer to my husband. I had to start reaching out to friends instead of avoiding them. I definitely, definitely needed to stop drinking so much. And I needed to take better care of myself. Simple stuff, right? Real simple but knowing what you need to do isn’t enough to make yourself do it. You know, I would think about exercising, but I wouldn’t. I would consider calling a friend to talk, to tell them what was going on to get support, but I didn’t. I knew, I knew intellectually that if I tried to find a job outside of the media business, it would help. I just could not motivate myself to dust off that resume and get started. And you know that’s the thing. That’s the thing that makes changing so hard. Change requires you to do things that feel hard. They may not seem hard when you look from the outside, but when you’re the one that has to make the change, holy cow! Not only hard, it’s scary. Change requires courage. It requires confidence. And you know, I stepped out of both.

You know what I did spend a lot of time doing? Thinking. Oh yeah, thinking made it worse. The more I thought about the situation that Chris and I were in, the more afraid I fell. That’s what your mind does when you focus on problems, it magnifies them. It’s called the spotlight effect. It’s actually scientific term. The more I worried, the more uncertain and overwhelmed I became. The more I thought about my problems, the more paralyzed I felt. So I got into this kind of destructive vicious cycle. Every night I have a few drinks to take the edge off. I love my Manhattan’s. I climb in bed, be little drunk, a little buzzed. Amazing how much better you feel when you take the edge off with some booze, right? That’s why we all do it. And I closed my eyes. I just like literally melt into that bed and I dream about a different life. And okay, now in the dream all the problems completely gone. I don’t have to work. I can just pursue what I want to do. Chris’s restaurant business has magically transform. Like it, it was amazing. And of course the moment I woke up, I had face reality. My life was a nightmare. It was not the dream state that I was just in. I was 41. I was unemployed. I was in financial ruin. I was struggling with the drinking problem. I had zero confidence in myself or my husband to fix the problems. And I had no idea, no idea what I wanted to do. That my friend is where the snooze button comes in. Instead of facing the day, of course it flows once, twice. Now that I’m unemployed why the hell should I get up? I don’t feel like it. When I get that snooze button, it was the one moment every day where I actually felt like I was in control. I stop to think about it now, you know what it was? It was an act of defiance. It literally was like I was saying: oh yeah? Take that life, fuck you. I’m not getting up right now. I’m going back to sleep so there.

By the time I finally did get up, Chris was long gone. He’s a smart guy. He knew that he did not want to be in the house when yours truly got up. I love that man. The kids, they were in various states of dress. The school bus was long gone. I mean they’d say that the mornings were chaotic thanks to my snooze button habit. That would be putting it politely. They were a shitt show. You know we are always late. I forgot lunches, backpacks, gym bags, permission slips as we raced out the door. I can laugh about it now, but I remember, I remember feeling like the loser mom. I remember just sitting in the school parking lot realizing I had forgotten the lunches again and just thinking when am I ever going to get it together? And all of this shame and beating myself up, you know what it did? It just put me on edge even more. How can you possibly climb out of a hole when you’re pounding yourself down?

And here’s the kicker. You know, I knew what do. I’ve already said this. I knew what to do. I needed to get up in time, to make the kids breakfast and get them on the bus and then I needed to look for a job. That’s it. And the thing about change that I also want you to realize is just because the stuff that you need to do is simple, doesn’t make it easy. That’s right. It’s simple but it’s not easy. And when you can’t get the simple stuff done, it tends to just bash your confidence because you don’t even have an excuse for why you can’t do it. So as this goes on and on and on, it becomes a death spiral for your confidence. I mean if I can’t even get up on time, how the heck am I going have faith in myself to fix the bigger problems? My marriage, no money, How am I gonna do that? I mean, I can see sitting here now as I’m talking to you that I was totally losing hope, absolutely. Have you ever noticed how the smallest things can feel so hard? It’s like the little stuff, the little stuff that we’re all supposed to be able to deal, right? And having heard from thousands of you, I know that I’m not alone on this one. The list of hard stuff, guess what? It’s really universal. The same stuff that’s hard for you, is hard for everybody. Speaking up in a meeting, staying positive, making a decision, powerful decision. How about finding time for yourself? That’s a hard one. Raising your hand. Asking for a raise. Working on your resume. Sometimes hitting send on an email. How many times, I know you’ve done this, you’ve rewritten an email, at least a dozen times and then you think about it and you wait. That’s a little thing and yet we overthink it. We doubt ourselves. Sticking to your plans, for some people leaving the house is an act of bravery. Talking to someone you find attractive. I have been blown away by how many men write, saying that it’s just daunting, daunting to break through that confidence barrier and actually just go walk up and talk to somebody you find attractive. Blocking an ex in social media. Yeah, that one. You think about it, but you don’t do it. It’s a small thing. Saying no. Eating in moderation. The list goes on and on and on. In my case, it was just getting up on time. That’s it. That’s all I needed to do. I needed to get up on time and I couldn’t do it.

You know, lying in bed every night I would, I would do that thing. Have you ever done that thing? Where you get in bed, you’re like alright. You have a little talk with yourself. You’re like, that’s it, Mel. I’ve had it with you. Tomorrow girlfriend you are changing. Tomorrow you’re gonna wake up on time, you’re gonna have a better attitude, you’re gonna try a little harder, you’re gonna go to the gym, you’re gonna be nice to Chris, you’re not gonna drink so much, It’s gonna be amazing. And then of course you go to bed, you sleep, you have that wonderful dream about life where you don’t have to work and then you wake up and you’re back in the nightwear. That was me. Every single night. Every single night.

Five seconds. That’s all it took. The alarm would ring and within five seconds, I would’ve talked myself out of becoming the new me. Now the reason I didn’t get out of bed and this is a really small point, but a very important, we’re gonna talk a lot about this in the book. I didn’t feel like it. That simple. I didn’t feel like it. Now, later I would learn that I was stuck in what researchers call a habit lube, by hitting the snooze button so many mornings in a row that killing it was now what scientists call a closed loop, pattern. It’s encoded in my brain. It’s a habit. I don’t even think about it. Well, luckily one night everything changed. I was about to turn off the TV and head to bed when a television commercial caught my attention.Now look, it may have been the fact that I had had three Manhattan’s, I don’t know. I’m not gonna lie about that. But there in the screen was an image of a rocket. Yep, that’s right, a rocketship launching. It sounds so cheesy, doesn’t it? And I could hear on the TV, the famous five second countdown 54321, fire and smoke had filled the screen and then boom, the shuttle launched and I had this harebrained instinct, right there. That’s it. That’s it Mell Robbins. I’m gonna launch myself out of bed tomorrow, like a rocket. I’m gonna move so fast, I don’t have time to talk myself out of it.

It was just an instinct I could’ve easily dismissed it. Luckily I didn’t. I acted on it. You know, I’ve talked a lot about the problems, a lot about my bad attitude, a lot about my feelings and my resignation, but the truth is, I wanted to solve our problems. I did not want to destroy my marriage. I didn’t want to feel like the world’s worst mom. I wanted to be financially secure. I wanted to feel happy. I wanted to feel proud of myself, again. I desperately wanted to change. I just didn’t know how. I wanted to improve my life. I didn’t know how to do that either. And this brings us to a really important point in the story. That moment that I saw that rocketship launch is stupid as it sounds right now, that was an instinct. That was attached to my goal to want a change. It was my inner wisdom talking. And what’s incredible is the fact that I even heard it. That was a tipping point. Following it? Life-changing.

You see, your brain and your body, it’s sending you signals, all day long. Your brain, your body, it’s trying to get you to wake up, to pay attention. And this, this idea, this instinct, Oh, I should launch myself out of bed; that’s an example of what I’m talking about, a signal. Now it seemed kind of stupid in the moment, but when you start to learn how to pay attention to your instincts and then you also learn how to honor them with deliberate action, it changes your life. And there’s a lot more to this point about acting on your instincts than just the phrase, trust your gut. There is actually research to back up what I’m talking about. This was an instinct telling me to move and I listened to it. There’s research from the University of Arizona that was done in partnership with Cornell and Due. And they were able to establish, there’s a really powerful connection between your brain and your instinct to change your life. See, when you set a goal and I had a goal, my goal was change, my goal was get out of bed, my goal was fix the situation; I just didn’t know cognitively how. But when you set a goal to do something, guess what? Your brain, your brain gets on board. Your brain opens up a task list. No joke whenever you’re near things that can help you achieve these goals that you set for yourself, your brain is to fire up your instincts and signal you, any time you’re near something that can help you.

Let me give you an example, just that I can make this crystal clear. Let’s say you got a goal to get healthier, okay? A lot of us have a goal, we wanna become healthier, lose little weight, get in better shape. If you walk into a living room what happens? Nothing, right? You gotta go, so what? I’m in a living room. However, if you’re walking past the gym, how do you feel? Kind of guilty, don’t you? There’s a reason. When you walk past the gym, your prefrontal cortex lights up because you’re near something related to getting healthy. As you pass that gym, you’re gonna subconsciously feel like that you should exercise. That’s an instinct. That’s an instinct that’s been fired up from your brain that is signaling you to act on a goal. That’s your inner wisdom and it is so unbelievably important that you learn how to pay attention to it. No matter how small or silly those instincts may seem. Now, subconsciously, my brain was signaling me to pay attention to this rocket launch on TV and that five second moment my brain was sending me very very clear instructions. Mel, Mel, pay attention. See that rocket launch Mel? I want you to grab onto it. You need to believe in it and you need to do it. Tomorrow morning when that alarm goes off, do not stop, do not think, do not lay in bed, do not talk yourself out of it. You do just like that rocket did and you 54321, and you launch your ass out of bed Mel Robbins. That is what my brain was telling me.

Now, see one of the things that I’ve learned, using the five second rule for more than seven years is that when it comes to your goals when it comes to your dreams when it comes to changing your life, your inner wisdom is a genius. Your goal related impulses urges instincts. They are there to guide you and you have got to learn to bet on them. Not only because of all this new research that’s coming out between the brain and your goals, but also because of history. History has example after example after example. Some of the greatest inspirations have led to discoveries that have changed all of our lives. I mean, that’s how some of the world’s most useful inventions were discovered. Did you know that in 1826, John Walker, he discovered the match. He was using a stick to stir the pot of chemicals and then after he’s done stirring, you know what he tried to do? He tried to scrape this glob that had formed on the stick off the end of it and it ignited. He followed his instinct. His instinct was, ooh, I wonder if I can make that happen again. He re-created it. That’s how they’ve discovered the match. Pretty cool, ha? He could’ve easily ignored it or what about Velcro? 1941 guy named George, he noticed, he an instinct that these cockle birds, these little bird things had attached to his dog’s fur. So he pulled it off and he turned it around and he examined it and realized that there are these sort of interlocking little pieces to it. That’s what his instincts fired up that led him to creating Velcro for crying out louder.

What about the posted note? You know the back story behind the posted note? It’s all five second decision, an instinct. 1974, Art Fry, he got the idea for a posted note based on a five second instinct. He needed a bookmark. You see, he was part of the choir. And he wanted to figure out how he could put a bookmark in the hymnal. When he was practicing during the week and he needed to make sure it could stay there for the church service on Sunday, but when they remove the bookmark that it didn’t damage the pages. That was the instincts that came up for the posted note. That’s even how the Frapachino was born, 1992. There was an assistant manager at a Starbucks in Santa Monica and he had this instinct. That’s’s interesting. Every time it’s hot outside we lose business. We should have a frozen drink. So on an instinct he brought in a blender. He started tinkering with the ingredients that they had at that Starbucks. Now, by the way they weren’t supposed to have a blender. They did not like blenders at Starbucks back then because it interfered with the coffee shop environment. He tinkered with recipes for a month and then on an instinct when a vice president came by to do a regional tour, he handed him a sample. A year later, the first Frapachino at Starbucks was rolled out at that store. It’s now 20% of global sales.

When it comes to change, innovation, goals and dreams you got to bet on yourself. And that bet starts with hearing the instincts to change and honoring it, honoring it with action. Thinking about it alone, not gonna make it happen. I feel so thankful looking back, that I actually grabbed on to that idea of launching out of bed like a rocket because I could have so easily blown it off. Let me tell you what happened because my entire life changed because of it. The reason why I am sitting here talking to you right now is because of that singular moment. You see the very next morning, the alarm rang and the first thing I felt was dread. Nothing had changed, nothing. It was dark. It was cold. It was winter in Boston. Still had a lien on the house. Still unemployed. Still no money in the checking account. Still fighting with my husband. Still feel like a freaking loser. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to do anything. I wanted to hit the snooze button. But then I remember the rocket launch and I did something I had never done before. I ignored how I felt, I didn’t stop and think, I did what needed to be done. Instead of hitting the snooze button, I did exactly as my instinct required. I started counting, backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And then, I stood up. That was the exact moment I discovered the five second rule. The five second rule. Here’s the definition: The moment you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and physically move or your brain will stop you.