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In this book, you’re gonna learn how to become the happiest person you know. The next three chapters we’ll walk through step-by-step approach to how you can use the five second rule in combination with some recent research-based strategies to beat fear, to stop worrying, to manage and even cure anxiety and absolutely change how you think. Now, if you’ve seen me on TV as a commentator for CNN or read my columns in success Magazine, it’s really easy to assume that I was born with the confidence of warrior. That assumption only get strengthened when you watch my YouTube videos or my Ted talks or experience an event, where I’m speaking live on stage. Yeah, I’m confident now but I was not born that way. For most of my adult life, I was a loudmouth. I was extroverted, but I was plagued by deep insecurity. Confidence is a skill that I’ve built over the years by practicing acts of everyday courage. What a lot of people don’t know about me is that I’ve suffered from anxiety for more than 25 years. I had debilitating post-partum depression when our first daughter Sawyer was born and I couldn’t be left alone with her for the first two months. I’ve taken Zoloft to control my panic attacks for nearly 2 decades. The struggle with my thoughts has been real and at times, terrifying.

When I first discovered the rule I used it to change my behavior. The rule worked wonders and as acting with courage every day became second nature, my confidence grew stronger. However, the anxiety never fully disappeared. Despite how confident I had become. It’s always there, simmering beneath the surface. I focused on learning to live with it, manage it and make sure that it didn’t boil over into full-blown panic attacks. About four years ago, I started to wonder if I could use the five second rule to change more than my physical behavior. I wondered if I could change my thoughts. I’d seen the effects it had on other habits, so why not try to break the mental habit of anxiety, panic and fear? I mean they’re patterns, just like nailbiting or any other habit; just patterns that you repeat. They’re just habits. So I started using the rule to change the way that my mind worked. I began by using the rule to break the habit of worrying. As I mastered that skill, I used the rule to control my anxiety and beat my fear of flying. That worked, too.

As I write this sentence, I can tell you, I’ve cured myself of anxiety. I haven’t taken Zoloft in years and I’m panic attack free. I no longer have a habit of worrying and my fear of flying, gone. Learning to take control of my mind, direct my thoughts and dismantle fear has been the single greatest thing I’ve ever done to improve the quality of my life. I almost never feel worried and the rare times that I do, I just 54321, and I direct my mind toward the solutions rather than worrying about the problems. I’ve transformed my mind, using the rule and I’m the happiest and most optimistic that I’ve ever been. And I think that’s because my mind is working for me, instead of constantly working against me. Now it’s your turn, how to learn the rule to do this remarkable mental transformation? First, you’re gonna learn how to break the addiction to worrying and negative self talk, using the five second rule, the science of habits and the power of gratitude. Second, you’ll dive into the subjects of anxiety and panic. You’re gonna learn what it is and what it isn’t, and I’m gonna give you a step-by-step method for how you can interrupt, reframe and eventually eliminate anxiety from your life. Finally, you’re gonna learn a proven strategy for how you can beat any fear, using my fear of flying is an example, you’ll learn how to use the rule with anchor thoughts to prevent fear from taking over your mind. Everything you’re about to learn is so simple, so powerful, that can even teach it to your kids.

Chapter 12

Stop worrying

More than any other change, ending your habit of worrying will create the single biggest positive impact in your life. Believe it or not, you were taught to worry. As a kid, you heard your parents worrying constantly. “Hey, be careful”, “Wear a hat or you’ll catch a cold”, “Don’t slip on the ice”, “Don’t sit so close to the TV”. As adults we spend way too much time and energy worrying about things that we can’t control or that could go wrong. And when you get to be near the end of your life, you wish you hadn’t. Dr. Carl Pillemer is a professor of human development at Cornell University. He’s also the founder of something called the legacy project. You can Google it. He’s met with more than 1200 senior citizens that are living in nursing homes for one reason. He wanted to discuss the meaning of life. Now in the middle of doing the project he was shocked to learn that most people near the end of their lives had the exact same regret, the exact same one: I wish I hadn’t spent so much of my lifetime worrying. Their advice was devastatingly simple and direct. Worrying is an enormous waste of your precious and limited lifetime.

Now, here’s what’s exciting. You can stop worrying and the five second rule will teach you how. You see worrying is a default setting that your mind goes to when you aren’t paying attention. The key is catching yourself when you drift into worry and then regaining mental control by using the rule. I’m gonna give you an example because it happens all day long to you. My husband recently got his motorcycle license and he just bought a small used motorcycle. Yesterday, I was sitting inside the house and I noticed him on the bike pulling out of the driveway. As he drove down the road, I noticed my mind immediately drifted into worry. I started to wonder whether or not he would get hit by a car. I wondered if he would become a statistic and I started worrying that oh, I’m gonna get a phone call from the police telling me he’s been in an accident. The worry, it literally hijacked my mind within five seconds. That fast and you know what? My worrying, it’s not going to keep him safe. And it certainly is not gonna prevent an accident. I was standing in our house and he was out on the bike. What happens with worry is that the worrying kills me, it doesn’t kill Chris. You know, as one 83-year-old in the study said, my worrying is not gonna solve a thing. It just put me on edge for the entire time that Chris is out riding his motorcycle and you know what that does? It doesn’t protect him. It robs me of enjoying my life.

Now, as soon as I catch myself worrying, I now use the five second rule, 54321 and then I force myself to think about something more positive, like the thought of him smiling as he drives down the road. And here’s the funny thing, Chris my husband, he is a humongous cyclist. I think I’ve told you earlier in the book that he has done half Ironman, he also is the race director for the triathlon in our hometown. I mean he is out on his bike, any nice day, the guys out riding 50-60 miles, constantly training. And he’s always by himself. Now, it’s interesting as I never worry about that, ever. I don’t know why. My mind just never kind of drifts there. But here I was, standing in my office, he’s driving the motorcycle 10 miles an hour down our road, because he’s trying to teach himself how to shift the gears. There are more turkeys on our road than actual cars. The chances of him getting hit, zero. Now the thing though is that worrying takes over when you’re not even paying attention. It happened the other day, again. Our daughters, they were returning home from a service trip in Peru and throughout the day, I just caught my mind drift. I would be sitting there at my desk, I’d be reading an email and all of a sudden I would start thinking about a plane crash. I’d be thinking about a missed flight. I’d be thinking about them falling off the cliff in the Andes. I’d be thinking about a bus going back and forth on a switchback and tumbling off of lost bags of the girls being kidnapped at the air… I was ridiculous. The girls were fine and without the rule I would’ve ruined my day.

Here they were, flying home from Peru, having just volunteered for a month and I was suffering at my desk. But every time I caught myself drifting to a bad thought, I would say to myself, not doing that 54321. And I would point to a thought that would make me smile. And the one that I kept picking is them walking into the house, dropping their luggage, talking a million miles an hour all about their trip. So my mind would drift to a plane crash, I’d go 54321, and I’d think about them in the kitchen. My mind would drift to one of them falling off the cliff in the Andes, 54321 and my mind would go to them talking in the kitchen. Because here’s the thing, if they’re standing in the kitchen telling me about the trip, they obviously made it home, didn’t they? And that thought then, teaches my mind to think about something that’s positive instead of hijacking me with some silly worry.

Now, another thing that surprised me about worry is just how subtle it is and how fast it can seize control of you. And I’ve also been surprised by how often I start to worry, the moment that I feel happiness or love. This spring, it happened to me as I was looking at our 17-year-old daughter. You know, I had this incredible moment where my heart just left out of my chest. And I felt this tidal wave of love wash over me and then suddenly, without any warning, all these worries just came galloping into my mind and they stole the moment and all I felt wasn’t love anymore, it was fear. This is what happened. We were at the mall and Sawyer was trying on dresses for her high school prom. And let me tell you, it’d been a long afternoon. I think we are on like our third dress store and she had tried on, I bet she had tried on 40 dresses. She hated every last one of them. And by this point of the day, anytime I said oh my gosh, you look beautiful, her mood just got even worse. So I was in the dressing room with her and I was picking up the rejects that she was handing to me and I was hanging them back on the hangers and then I hand her the next gown to try on and I was kind of starting to panic. I mean, the prom was a couple of weeks away and I thought we never gonna find anything at this rate. I mean this is ridiculous and she’s getting worse and worse and so I handed her another one to try on and said okay, let’s just bang through these next three dresses and let’s get out here. And I stepped out of the dressing room to give her a little bit of space because she was just like a caged bull in that thing, just not enjoying yourself and I called my husband. And suddenly I hear her go, mom, mom can you come here? Now, I tried to read her voice. I couldn’t tell she was crying, frustrated, if she needed help with some sort of stuck zipper or something. So I cracked open the door to the dressing room. She had on a floorlength gown and I could see her reflection in the mirror and I gotta tell you, she looked stunning. The dress, it was perfect. It was like this peach color and it had these beautiful flowy side panels that were pink. I mean, it was everything that she wanted. There were no sparkles, no lace, it had an open back. It was a bright color. I mean it just truly took my breath away, seeing her standing there. And our eyes caught in the mirror and she said, what you think mom? And I could feel the tears just coming.

You know when she was an infant, I remember experiencing the same tidal wave of emotion that can rush over you when you love someone so much. You know, in the middle of the night I’d wake up and go in and check on her and she’d be there in her crib. You know have some kids that sleep on their back and they raise their arms up above her head. I would stand there alone in her nursery and I’d just stare at her and I’d get hit with this huge tidal wave of love. And I would stand there and marvel how can I love something so much. I mean, it just felt like my heart might burst. And I felt that exact same thing standing outside that dressing room in the mall. I just, I just was so blown away by how much I loved her. And then without warning, the worries, they just rushed in. They just like, they swept over me. I mean it just stole the moment without warning. I was now suddenly thinking about her heading off to college and getting married and being a new mom and living far away and time passing and getting older and suddenly my life is over. And my whole life flashed before my eyes. Suddenly time was racing by. She was getting too old. This is happening too fast. I was losing her. I was so overwhelmed. I was sad. I just, my eyes started to just swell up not with tears of joy, that I was now afraid like life is cooking. She can’t be this old.

And Sawyer saw me getting emotional. I mean, I hear I was just hijacked by worry and fear and… And she thought I was crying because of the dress. She goes like, oh mom, don’t cry, you’ll make me cry. But she didn’t know I was crying because of how scared I was. I was worried my life was happening too fast. She was growing up too fast. She was about to move away. I mean, I was gonna lose her. I was crying because I just wanted my life to slow down. And you know what? Worry, it robbed me. It robbed me of joy in that moment. Like, it took me away from Sawyer, took me to this really dark place in my head. So instead of just being present and in awe of my beautiful daughter, all I felt was fear. And that’s how worry and fear hijack your mind. They rob you of the magic and the wonder in your life. They steal you away from the moment. You know Brené Brown, love her. She observed this exact same phenomenon in her researcher for her bestseller, daring greatly. She found that the feeling, that kind of worst case feeling, that pain that I felt in moments of joy, you know, things like you can’t hug your kid without worrying about something bad happening to them, is amazingly common. Why is it so hard for us to do it? Well, I guess for trying to beat vulnerability to the punch is what Dr. Brown says.

You see, here’s what I believe. When your mind takes you somewhere sad, dark, doubtful or negative, you don’t have to go with it. Your mind can drift to worry. You don’t have to drift there. I love what Hien wrote to me. Since I saw your first Ted talk, I’ve come to realize how big an enemy, my bad inner voice has been to not only my self-confidence but more so to my ability to move forward and grow myself identity. Every decision and turn has been shaded by self-doubt and concerns for what others would think. 99.999% of the time, it is always been fake reality that I had created in my mind. My biggest challenge has and always will be to stop worrying what others think of me. It makes no difference. Thanks for the great motivation. When you find your inner voice becoming the enemy, as Hien did and as I experienced, it’s important to stop worrying and recognize that in five seconds, yeah worry can hijack you, but in five seconds you can hijack yourself back. In five seconds, worry can steal your thoughts, but in five seconds you can make a decision to not go with it. That’s exactly what I did. I could feel, feel how quickly this fear took over. So I started counting, 543 and as I counted I could feel and this is going to happen to you, I could feel the fear lowering in my body. You’re gonna start to, as you use this, you’re gonna feel how worry, as your thoughts to worry, they drift. You’re gonna feel your mind move literally from the thoughts that you’re thinking, you’re gonna feel it adrift to the basal ganglia. You’re gonna feel your mind switching gears as you start to worry, 54321. You’re gonna yank yourself out of your head. And you’re gonna plant yourself back in the present moment. I started counting and it switched gears from worry about how quickly my life is going to the present. Because I’m gonna tell you something, I was not gonna let my brain and my habit of worrying, not gonna let it robbed me of this experience with my daughter. I was not gonna let this derail me from being in the moment and being present enough to take a mental photograph. So I would remember this. Because I didn’t want to remember the worry, I wanted to remember this moment.

Then I asked myself 2 simple questions. What am I grateful for in this moment? What do I want to remember? When you ask that simple question, you impact your brain at a biological level. Because in order to respond, you have to take stock of the moment, your life, relationships, work and search for an answer. So when you 54321, and you awaken your prefrontal cortex and then you just kind of focus yourself on what is it about this moment; it’s going to make you see the positive aspects of your life. And as soon as you think about what you’re grateful for, you’re gonna start feeling grateful instead of worried. The answer to the question was clear to me. I was grateful to have such an incredible young woman as my daughter. And after three hours of drama at the mall, I was also grateful that we had finally found the dress. Katie also is using the rule to reflect on what she’s grateful for and to control her worrying. I saw you in California at a convention. I almost didn’t go on that trip, I was riddled with anxiety and guilt, leaving my five-year-old daughter. But I’m also going through a divorce. But then I went and I met you. And your huge inspiration to me and so is the five second rule. I used the five second rule before I even knew there was one by pushing myself to go. I cried every day while I was away. I’m still using it daily in my life to work out, to not be sad, to be more grateful and now to hold off on my divorce… because we just aren’t sure and that’s okay. I’m learning that nothing is perfect in life. So thank you.

Nothing in life is perfect, nothing at all. But you can use 54321 to quiet the mental chatter and learn to appreciate all of the small moments, like feeling grateful for your daughter. Feeling grateful doesn’t just feel good. According to neuroscientists Alex Korb, it actually changes your brain chemistry by activating the brainstem region and produces dopamine. So with my worries gone, I took a deep breath and stepped into the dressing room to move closer to Sawyer and I put my hand on her shoulder and our eyes met the mirror. Well, what do you think mom? I looked at her and I said, I think Luke is gonna have a heart attack, you look absolutely gorgeous.